Chinese wind OEMs in Europe
The FT has interviewed the European chief executive of one of China’s largest wind turbine manufacturers. His message: Europe is a long-haul commitment, and the company is hiring from European OEMs and utilities and moving R&D to Europe. From a developer’s desk in Iberia, three things in the piece matter more than the headline.
1. The numbers are still small. Chinese manufacturers supplied 446 MW of turbines to Europe in 2025, under 3% of the capacity added (GWEC). Price is not the constraint: pricing commonly reported 30 to 40% below European equivalents, shorter lead times, and payment terms European OEMs cannot match under OECD rules.
2. The obstacles are getting more concrete. In May the UK declined to support the company’s turbines offshore on national security grounds, which stopped a GBP 1.5bn factory in Scotland. The EU has subsidy probes running and is introducing rules to keep Chinese-made turbines out of publicly supported projects. A German offshore developer and its preferred Chinese supplier parted ways last year.
3. The piece also shows two routes in. One is the unsubsidised project: another Chinese OEM’s first large turbine in Europe, announced last month, is a 6.25 MW machine in Spain supplying a corporate offtaker. Rules built around public subsidy have less grip on a corporate PPA or a merchant-plus-storage project, and much of Iberian development is exactly that. The other is governance: the UK partnership in the piece is being designed to keep turbine access, data and firmware under local management. That answers the question lenders ask first.
What a developer still has to answer at final investment decision (FID), whichever flag is on the nacelle:
– Lender appetite for the specific OEM and platform.
– Operating references in comparable conditions, with availability data.
– Local O&M, spare parts and service presence.
– Governance of remote access, SCADA and operational data, with a named local party in control.
The political question will be settled market by market, not by developers. What developers control is the comparison: run it honestly, put these four questions to every OEM early, and negotiate with all of them on the same terms.