Future Changes of Wind Speed and Wind Energy Potentials in EURO-CORDEX Ensemble Simulations

Abstract

Renewable energy production is strongly influenced by weather and climate. Regional climate projections can be useful to quantify climate change impacts on renewable energies. With this aim, we analyze future changes of wind speed and wind energy potentials using a multimodel ensemble of EURO-CORDEX simulations at 12 km and three-hourly resolution, considering nine different global and regional climate model chains. A comparison between modeled historical 10 m wind speeds and ERA-Interim-driven evaluation runs for the same regional climate models uncovers some substantial model biases. The bias-corrected 10 m wind speeds are extrapolated to the hub height of a wind turbine to derive gridded wind energy output (Eout). The ensemble mean responses project only small changes of mean annual and winter Eout for large parts of Europe in future decades, but a considerable decrease for summer Eout. In terms of variability, increasing intraannual and interdaily variabilities are projected for large parts of northern, central, and eastern Europe. While the ensemble spread is quite large for interdaily variability, results are more robust for intraannual variability. With respect to wind speed characteristics relevant for wind energy production, a robust increase in the occurrence of low wind speeds (<3 m/s) is detected. Due to a combination of higher annual mean Eout and lower intraannual variability, climate change could be beneficial for regions like Baltic and Aegean Sea. For large parts of Germany, France, and Iberia, a lower mean Eout and increased intraannual variability may imply larger temporal/spatial fluctuations in future wind energy production and therefore a more challenging wind energy management.