IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v15y2022i1p302-d716579.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climate Change and Renewable Energy Generation in Europe—Long-Term Impact Assessment on Solar and Wind Energy Using High-Resolution Future Climate Data and Considering Climate Uncertainties

Author

Listed:
  • Yuchen Yang

    (Division of Building Physics, Department of Building and Environmental Technology, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden)

  • Kavan Javanroodi

    (Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (LESO-PB), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland)

  • Vahid M. Nik

    (Division of Building Physics, Department of Building and Environmental Technology, Lund University, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
    Division of Building Technology, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden)

Abstract

Climate change can strongly affect renewable energy production. The state of the art in projecting future renewable energy generation has focused on using regional climate prediction. However, regional climate prediction is characterized by inherent uncertainty due to the complexity of climate models. This work provides a comprehensive study to quantify the impact of climate uncertainties in projecting future renewable energy potential over five climate zones of Europe. Thirteen future climate scenarios, including five global climate models (GCMs) and three representative concentration pathways (RCPs), are downscaled by the RCA4 regional climate model (RCM) over 90 years (2010–2099), divided into three 30-year periods. Solar and wind energy production is projected considering short-/long-term climate variations and uncertainties in seven representative cities (Narvik, Gothenburg, Munich, Antwerp, Salzburg, Valencia, and Athens). The results showed that the uncertainty caused by GCMs has the most substantial impact on projecting renewable energy generation. The variations due to GCM selection can become even larger than long-term climate change variations over time. Climate change uncertainties lead to over 23% and 45% projection differences for solar PV and wind energy potential, respectively. While the signal of climate change in solar radiation is weak between scenarios and over time, wind energy generation is affected by 25%.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuchen Yang & Kavan Javanroodi & Vahid M. Nik, 2022. "Climate Change and Renewable Energy Generation in Europe—Long-Term Impact Assessment on Solar and Wind Energy Using High-Resolution Future Climate Data and Considering Climate Uncertainties," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(1), pages 1-19, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:1:p:302-:d:716579
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/302/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/1/302/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kapica, Jacek & Jurasz, Jakub & Canales, Fausto A. & Bloomfield, Hannah & Guezgouz, Mohammed & De Felice, Matteo & Zbigniew, Kobus, 2024. "The potential impact of climate change on European renewable energy droughts," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PA).
    2. Wang, Dinan & Grimmelt, Michael, 2023. "Climate influence on the optimal stand-alone microgrid system with hybrid storage – A comparative study," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 657-664.
    3. Marten Fesefeldt & Massimiliano Capezzali & Mokhtar Bozorg & Riina Karjalainen, 2023. "Impact of Heat Pump and Cogeneration Integration on Power Distribution Grids Based on Transition Scenarios for Heating in Urban Areas," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-15, March.
    4. Bing-Zhang Chen & Hsuan Liao & Linda Chen & Jiann-Fuh Chen, 2022. "Design and Implementation of the Bidirectional DC-DC Converter with Rapid Energy Conversion," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-19, January.
    5. Zhu, Junpeng & Huang, Yong & Lu, Shuai & Shen, Mengya & Yuan, Yue, 2024. "Incorporating local uncertainty management into distribution system planning: An adaptive robust optimization approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 363(C).
    6. Kılkış, Şiir, 2023. "Integrated urban scenarios of emissions, land use efficiency and benchmarking for climate neutrality and sustainability," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    7. T. M. I. Riayatsyah & T. A. Geumpana & I. M. Rizwanul Fattah & T. M. Indra Mahlia, 2022. "Techno-Economic Analysis of Hybrid Diesel Generators and Renewable Energy for a Remote Island in the Indian Ocean Using HOMER Pro," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-18, August.
    8. Minerva Singh & Luitgard Schwendenmann & Gang Wang & Maria Fernanda Adame & Luís Junior Comissario Mandlate, 2022. "Changes in Mangrove Carbon Stocks and Exposure to Sea Level Rise (SLR) under Future Climate Scenarios," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-17, March.
    9. Mariana Ferdeș & Gigel Paraschiv & Mariana Ionescu & Mirela Nicoleta Dincă & Georgiana Moiceanu & Bianca Ștefania Zăbavă, 2023. "Anaerobic Co-Digestion: A Way to Potentiate the Synergistic Effect of Multiple Substrates and Microbial Diversity," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-24, February.
    10. John Wang & Jeffrey Hsu & Yang Li & Vicky Ching Gu, 2023. "Confronting Current Crises and Critical Challenges of Climate Change," International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development (IJSKD), IGI Global, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:15:y:2022:i:1:p:302-:d:716579. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.