Wind energy future projections over Western Europe: results from the BOREAS project

The production of renewable energy is critical to replacing a fossil-fuel-based energy system and reaching carbon neutrality. This energy generation is highly dependent on climate conditions and variability, which increases the vulnerability of electricity supply. Climate projections have proven to be key for policy and decision making in a global warming scenario, as they allow for maximizing renewable energy production. 

Herein, the BOREAS project aims to improve energy production and demand forecasting, supporting energy transition governance and the development of climate adaptation measures at different levels. In this contribution, we present the results from wind capacity factor (CF) estimations over climatically homogeneous regions over Western Europe (WE). 

To this purpose, we employ 6-hourly surface winds from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) and the ERA5 reanalysis to (i) obtain climatically homogeneous regions over WE based on the 1981-2010 historical reference period; (ii) estimate wind energy CF changes during the mid (2041-2070) and late 21st century (2071-2100) under the SSP585 scenario.

Wind regionalisations were generated using the k-means clustering method, with varying numbers of groups from 6 to 12. The obtained regions align with the climatological features of WE, indicating the influence of topography and the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. For the CF estimation, surface winds were first bias-corrected to the ERA5 reference, and the CF were constructed for 5 different turbine cases. Preliminary results show the spread in future CF due the uncertainty in future wind projections -particularly for the late 21st century- reinforcing the need for improved understanding of long-term climate change and variability.

Overall, this study presents novel tailored climate information based on a large ensemble of climate simulations, allowing for uncertainty quantification and regional assessments.