The rapid deployment of renewable energy, and wind power in particular, is widely recognized as one of the most effective solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change. Long term decarbonization scenarios developed by governments and institutions such as the International Energy Agency often rely on a massive expansion of installed wind capacity over the coming decades. Yet despite the long operational lifetime of wind assets, most projects are still designed, financed and valued under the implicit assumption of climatic stability.
Future energy production, in particular, is usually estimated from past weather records. As the economic performance of wind projects is sensitive to relatively small variations in energy output, changes of only a few percentage points in long term yield can materially affect project profitability. Understanding how climate change may alter future wind resources therefore represents an increasingly important issue for developers, operators, lenders and investors.
Observed meteorological trends and climate projections suggest that wind regimes are already evolving in several regions of the world and may continue to change throughout the 21st century. These changes are likely to have an impact on wind energy production.
However, wind electricity production depends not only on mean wind speed, but on the full distribution of wind conditions and temperature dependent air density, as well as technical parameters such as wind turbine power curve or hub height...