Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-6 (section)

==== 6.5.2.2 Wind Energy ====

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Climate change will not substantially impact future wind resources and will not compromise the ability of wind energy to support low-carbon transitions ( ''high confidence'' ). Changing wind variability may have a small-to-modest impact on backup energy and storage needs ( ''low confidence'' ); however, current evidence is largely from studies focused on Europe.

Long-term global wind energy resources are not expected to substantially change in future climate scenarios ( [[#Karnauskas--2018|Karnauskas et al. 2018]] ; [[#Pryor--2020|Pryor et al. 2020]] ; [[#Yalew--2020|Yalew et al. 2020]] ). However, recent research has indicated consistent shifts in the geographic position of atmospheric jets in the high-emission scenarios ( [[#Harvey--2014|Harvey et al. 2014]] ), which would decrease wind power potentials across the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes and increase wind potentials across the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere. However, the climate models used to make these assessments differ in how well they can reproduce the historical wind resources and wind extremes, which raises questions about the robustness of their predictions of future wind resources ( [[#Pryor--2020|Pryor et al. 2020]] ).

There are many regional studies on changes in wind resources from climate change. For Europe, there is medium evidence and moderate agreement that wind resources are already increasing and will continue to increase in Northern Europe and decrease in Southern Europe ( [[#Carvalho--2017|Carvalho et al. 2017]] ; [[#Devis--2018|Devis et al. 2018]] ; [[#Moemken--2018|Moemken et al. 2018]] ). For North America, the various studies have low agreement for the changes in future wind resources in part because the year-to-year variations in wind resources are often larger than the future change due to climate change ( [[#Johnson--2016|Johnson and Erhardt 2016]] ; [[#Chen--2020|Chen 2020]] ; [[#Costoya--2020|Costoya et al. 2020]] ; [[#Wang--2020b|Wang et al. 2020b]] ). Studies show increases in future wind resources in windy areas in South America ( [[#Ruffato-Ferreira--2017|Ruffato-Ferreira et al. 2017]] ; [[#de%20Jong--2019|de Jong et al. 2019]] ). No robust future changes in wind resources have been identified in China ( [[#Xiong--2019|Xiong et al. 2019]] ). However, none of the global or regional studies of the effects of climate change on wind resources considers the fine-scale dependence of wind resources on the topography and wind direction ( [[#Sanz%20Rodrigo--2016|Sanz Rodrigo et al. 2016]] ; [[#Dörenkämper--2020|Dörenkämper et al. 2020]] ) or the effect of expanding wind energy exploitation ( [[#Volker--2017|Volker et al. 2017]] ; [[#Lundquist--2019|Lundquist et al. 2019]] ). There is limited evidence that extreme wind speeds, which can damage wind turbines, will increase due to climate change ( [[#Pes--2017|Pes et al. 2017]] ; [[#Pryor--2020|Pryor et al. 2020]] ). Nevertheless, projected changes in Europe and North America – regions where the most extensive analysis has been undertaken – are expected to be within the estimates embedded in the design standards of wind turbines ( [[#Pryor--2013|Pryor and Barthelmie 2013]] ).

Future wind generation in Europe could decrease in summer and autumn, increasing in winter in northern-central Europe but decreasing in southernmost Europe ( [[#Carvalho--2017|Carvalho et al. 2017]] ). Towards 2100, intra-annual variations increase in most of Europe, except around the Mediterranean area ( [[#Reyers--2016|Reyers et al. 2016]] ), but this may reflect natural multi-decadal variability ( [[#Wohland--2019b|Wohland et al. 2019b]] ). Wind speeds may become more homogeneous over large geographical regions in Europe due to climate change, increasing the likelihood of large areas experiencing high or low wind speeds simultaneously ( [[#Wohland--2017|Wohland et al. 2017]] ). These changes could result in fewer benefits in the transmission of wind generation between countries and increased system integration costs. Europe could require a modest increase (up to 7%) in backup energy towards the end of the 21st century due to more homogeneous wind conditions over Europe ( [[#Wohland--2017|Wohland et al. 2017]] ; [[#Weber--2018|Weber et al. 2018]] ). However, other studies report that the impact of climate change is substantially smaller than interannual variability, with no significant impact on the occurrence of extreme low wind production events in Europe (Van Der Wiel et al. 2019). If European electricity systems are designed to manage the effects of existing weather variability on wind power, they can likely also cope with climate change impacts on wind power ( [[#Ravestein--2018|Ravestein et al. 2018]] ). Changes in wind-generation variability caused by climate change are also reported for North America ( [[#Haupt--2016|Haupt et al. 2016]] ; [[#Losada%20Carreño--2018|Losada Carreño et al. 2018]] ), with modest impacts on electricity system operation ( [[#Craig--2019|Craig et al. 2019]] ).

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