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

=== Box 6.7 | Impacts of Renewable Energy Production on Climate ===

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While climate change will affect energy systems ( [[#6.5|Section 6.5]] ), the reverse is potentially also true: increasing the use of renewable energy sources could affect local climate. Large solar PV arrays and hydroelectric dams darken the land surface, and wind turbines extract the wind’s kinetic energy near the Earth’s surface. Their environmental impacts of renewable energy production are mostly confined to areas close to the production sources and have been shown to be trivial compared to the mitigation benefits of renewable energy ( ''high confidence'' ).

'''Solar energy.''' Observations and model simulations have addressed whether large-scale solar PV power plants can alter the local and regional climate. In rural areas at the local scale, large-scale solar PV farms change the surface characteristics and affect air temperatures ( [[#Taha--2013|Taha 2013]] ). Measurements in rural Arizona, USA show local night-time temperatures 3°C–4°C warmer at the PV farm than surroundings ( [[#Barron-Gafford--2016|Barron-Gafford et al. 2016]] ). In contrast, measurements in urban settings show that solar PV panels on roofs provide a cooling effect ( [[#Taha--2013|Taha 2013]] ; [[#Ma--2017|Ma et al. 2017]] ). On the regional scale, modelling studies suggest cooling in urban areas (0.11–0.53°C) and warming in rural areas (up to 0.27°C) ( [[#Millstein--2011|Millstein and Menon 2011]] ). Global climate model simulations show that solar panels induce regional cooling by converting part of the incoming solar energy to electricity ( [[#Hu--2016|Hu et al. 2016]] ). However, converting the generated electricity to heat in urban areas increases regional and local temperatures, compensating for the cooling effect.

'''Wind energy.''' Surface temperature changes in the vicinity of wind farms have been detected ( [[#Smith--2013|Smith et al. 2013]] ; [[#Lee--2017|Lee and Lundquist 2017]] ; [[#Takle--2019|Takle et al. 2019]] ; [[#Xia--2019|Xia et al. 2019]] ) in the form of night-time warming. Data from field campaigns suggest that a ‘suppression of cooling’ can explain the observed warming ( [[#Takle--2019|Takle et al. 2019]] ). Regional and climate models have been used to describe the interactions between turbines and the atmosphere and find minor impacts ( [[#Vautard--2014|Vautard et al. 2014]] ). More sophisticated models confirm the local warming effect of wind farms but report that the impact on the regional area is slight and occasional (Wang et al. 2019d). Wind turbines alter the transport and dissipation of momentum near the surface but do not directly impact the Earth’s energy balance

Box 6.7

( [[#Fischereit--2021|Fischereit et al. 2021]] ). However, the secondary modifications to the energy and water exchanges have added implications for the climate system ( [[#Jacobson--2012|Jacobson and Archer 2012]] ).

'''Hydropower''' ''.'' The potential climate impacts of hydropower concentrate on the GHG emissions from organic matter decomposition when the carbon cycle is altered by the flooding of the hydroelectric power plant reservoir ( [[#Ocko--2019|Ocko and Hamburg 2019]] ), but emissions from organic matter decomposition decrease over time. The darker surface of the reservoir, compared to the lighter surrounding land may counterbalance part of the reduced GHG emissions by hydropower production ( [[#Wohlfahrt--2021|Wohlfahrt et al. 2021]] ). However, these impacts vary significantly among facilities due to the surrounding land properties and the area inundated by the reservoir.

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