Climate change impacts on wind energy potential in the European domain

TL;DR

This study assesses how climate change may alter wind energy potential across Europe using regional climate models, finding overall decreases but regional variations, and evaluates offshore wind prospects in the Black Sea.

Contribution

It introduces a novel methodology for projecting wind resource changes under climate scenarios and assesses offshore wind potential in the Black Sea region.

Findings

Overall decrease in wind resources across Europe under climate scenarios.

Regional increases in wind resources in North Africa and the Barents Sea.

Black Sea offshore wind potential remains viable with seasonal alignment to energy demand.

Abstract

We may anticipate that climate change will bring changes to the intensity and variability of near surface winds, either through local effects or by altering the large-scale flow. The impact of climate change on European wind resources has been assessed using a single-model-ensemble of the latest regional climate model from the Rossby Centre, RCA4. These simulations used data from five of the global climate models in the contemporary Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) as boundary conditions, and the results are publicly available under the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) project. Overall we find a consistent pattern of a decrease in the wind resources over the European domain under both the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios, although there are some regions, principally North Africa and the Barents Sea, with projected increases in wind resources. The pattern of change is both robust across the choice of scenario, and persistent: there is a very similar pattern of change found in the latter part of the 21st century as in the earlier. A case study was chosen to assess the potential for offshore wind-farms in the Black Sea region. We developed a realistic methodology for extrapolating near-surface wind speeds up to hub-height using a time-varying roughness length, and determined the extractable wind power at hub-height using a realistic model of contemporary wind-turbine energy production. We demonstrate that, unlike much of the Mediterranean basin, there is no robust pattern of a negative climate change impact on wind resources in the studied regions of the Black Sea. Furthermore, the seasonality of wind resources, with a strong peak in the winter, matches well to the seasonality of energy-demand in the region, making offshore wind-farms in the Black Sea region a viable source of energy for neighbouring countries.