Assessing climate change impacts on the near-term stability of the wind energy resource over the United States

Abstract

The energy sector comprises approximately two-thirds of global total greenhouse gas emissions. For this and other reasons, renewable energy resources including wind power are being increasingly harnessed to provide electricity generation potential with negligible emissions of carbon dioxide. The wind energy resource is naturally a function of the climate system because the "fuel" is the incident wind speed and thus is determined by the atmospheric circulation. Some recent articles have reported historical declines in measured near-surface wind speeds, leading some to question the continued viability of the wind energy industry. Here we briefly articulate the challenges inherent in accurately quantifying and attributing historical tendencies and making robust projections of likely future wind resources. We then analyze simulations from the current generation of regional climate models and show, at least for the next 50 years, the wind resource in the regions of greatest wind energy penetration will not move beyond the historical envelope of variability. Thus this work suggests that the wind energy industry can, and will, continue to make a contribution to electricity provision in these regions for at least the next several decades.uncertainty | wind energy density | internal climate variability | model evaluation | temporal trends T he energy sector comprises approximately two-thirds of global total greenhouse gas emissions and hence has been a focus for climate change mitigation efforts (1). Accordingly, renewable energy resources, including wind power, are being increasingly harnessed to provide virtually greenhouse gas emission-free sources of electricity. The global wind energy resource greatly exceeds current total global energy demand (2). Accordingly, a total of 47 GW of new wind energy electricity generation capacity was added worldwide during 2007 and 2008 (3), which accounted for over 10% of all new power generation capacity. New wind projects installed in the United States over the last five years have more than doubled wind-derived electricity generation capacity (2) to over 40 GW by the end of 2010 (4). Further expansion of the generation capacity is expected, and the 2008 US Department of Energy report 20% Wind by 2030 (5) proposes that by 2030, 20% of US electricity supply could derive from wind turbines.The wind energy resource is dictated by the incident wind speed and thus is determined by the atmospheric circulation. If there are substantial changes in the near-surface atmospheric flow and storm climates in a greenhouse-gas-warmed world, wind energy, or at least the spatial manifestations thereof, may be affected. Changes in measured near-surface (typically approximately 10 m agl) wind speeds over the last 30 years have been reported (e.g., 6, 7). However, assessing causality for these trends has proved difficult. Key challenges to understanding how climate nonstationarity has, or may, influence the spatial and temporal distribution of near-surface winds and the wind energy resource include:i. ...

Changes in Surface Wind Speed over North America from CMIP5 Model Projections and Implications for Wind Energy

“…This broadly agrees with the conclusion of Pryor and Barthelmie [8] that the estimate of wind power potential over the USA using present-day climatology will remain useful in the coming decades. Note that the trend considered in this study is defined as the centennial change over the whole 21st century.…”

Changes in terrestrial near-surface wind speed and their possible causes: an overview

“…Wind energy is a clean and reproducible energy, and the global wind energy resource greatly exceeds the current total global energy demand (Pryor and Barthelmie 2011). Therefore, a rapid increase in wind power has been predicted in many countries and regions Lu et al 2009;Pryor and Barthelmie 2010;Greene et al 2012;Tobin et al 2015Tobin et al , 2016.…”

Reduced wind strengthens top‐down control of an insect herbivore

“…Soybean aphids are consumed by many predators, but multicolored Asian ladybeetles are widely recognized as the most important (Ragsdale et al 2011), contributing to about one-third of total soybean aphid predation in the field (Costamagna and Landis 2007). In the midwest United States where these species are now common (see Plate 1), wind is a prominent component of the abiotic environment (Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts 2011) and is expected to decrease 10-15% during the 21st century (Segal et al 2001, Pryor andBarthelmie 2011). Predicting the effects of slowed winds on species like ladybeetles and aphids is difficult because little is known about how wind affects predator-prey interactions in general.…”