Feasibility Concern|Wind Capacity

Why this criterion? This criterion flags scenarios that assume a deployment of total wind capacity that is inconsistent with near-term market outlooks.

This technology is available at scale and has short project lead times, meaning that there are no fundamental obstacles to fast deployment. Its near-term growth can be estimated based on today's installed capacity and near-term market outlooks. While these estimates have their limitations, they can be used to set broad ranges of near-term feasibility.

Why this threshold? Existing capacities in 2024 are reported by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA, 2025). Yearly additions for 2025–2030 are estimated in a market outlook by the GWEC (2024).

The outlook is based on input from regional wind associations, government targets, tender results, announced auction plans, available project pipelines, and input from industry experts.

Based on the existing capacity data and the market outlook, we assume the following global thresholds for 2030:
• Lower threshold, high concern: 10% less than capacities operational in 2024, plus 33.75% of 2025–2030 additions from the market outlook.
• Lower threshold, medium concern: 5% less than capacities operational in 2024, plus 71.25% of 2025–2030 additions from the market outlook.
• Upper threshold, medium concern: 5% more than capacities operational in 2024, plus 157.5% of 2025–2030 additions from the market outlook.
• Upper threshold, high concern: 10% more than capacities operational in 2024, plus 220.0% of 2025–2030 additions from the market outlook.

Moreover, we assume the following regional thresholds for 2030:
• Lower threshold, medium concern: 40% less than capacities operational in 2024 plus 22.5% of 2025–2030 additions from the market outlook (without buffer/unknown).
• Upper threshold, medium concern: 40% more than capacities operational in 2024 plus 280% of 2025–2030 additions from the market outlook (without buffer/unknown).

WorldGeneric regionsModel-native regions

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R5R9R10

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Reference data

Dataset	Source	Description
`IRENA-RCS-2025-BNEF-2024-high-proj`	IRENA (2025)	Custom projections based on IRENA (2025) and {{ source2 }} with details documented in the description of the `Feasibility Concern\|Solar PV Capacity` and `Feasibility Concern\|Wind Capacity` criteria.
`IRENA-RCS-2025-BNEF-2024-low-proj`	IRENA (2025)	Custom projections based on IRENA (2025) and {{ source2 }} with details documented in the description of the `Feasibility Concern\|Solar PV Capacity` and `Feasibility Concern\|Wind Capacity` criteria.

Sources

Identifier	Bibliographic information	Links
`GWEC-2026`	GWEC. Global Wind Report 2026. Global Wind Energy Council, Brussels, Belgium, 2024.	URL
`IRENA-RCS-2025`	IRENA. Renewable Capacity Statistics 2025. International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, March 2025. ISBN 978-92-9260-652-7.	URL