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reports - Deliverable

Effects of climate change on wind and photovoltaic energy producibility

reports - Deliverable

Effects of climate change on wind and photovoltaic energy producibility

Wind energy is one of the fundamental renewable energy sources of the energy transition necessary to combat climate change. However, the same changing climate is potentially capable of influencing the availability of the wind resource itself. This study is aimed at understanding if, how, and to what extent ongoing climate change can influence wind power producibility in our country and comparing the results with similar results obtained for the photovoltaic sector.

Wind energy is one of the fundamental renewable energy sources of the energy transition necessary to combat climate change. However, the same changing climate may influence the availability of wind resources due to changes in circulation an consequently alter windiness in our territory. This study is specifically aimed at understanding if, how, and to what extent ongoing climate change can influence wind energy producibility in our country. The basis of this analysis are the Euro-CORDEX regional climate models, widely used for climate studies in the European area thanks to their high spatial resolution and their numerousness. Wind production depends on specific wind speed thresholds (cut-in and cut-off), which are those within which a generic type of wind turbine produces energy. This aspect shows how essential it is for the climate models chosen not to have systematic biases in wind estimation, as this could invalidate the correct estimate of wind power producibility. For this reason, the MERIDA meteorological reanalysis has been used to carry out a bias-correction of the 10 m wind predicted by the climate models. The producibility calculation was carried out considering a reference wind turbine among the most widespread in the Italian wind farm. The variations in the wind resource have thus been analyzed compared to the reference period 1986-2005 for the short (2021-2050), medium (2051-2080), and long term (2071-2100) according to the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. The variation of the climate signal of the ensemble mean of the climate models is also accompanied by an uncertainty analysis in order to evaluate the reliability of the signal itself. The producibility scenarios show a weak and insignificant change signal for the RCP 4.5 scenario, more important and significant for the RCP 8.5 scenario. In particular, in the latter there is a decrease in wind resources, especially in the medium and long term and especially in the off-shore areas of our territory, with a reduction of up to 15-20% for the period 2071-2100. The short-term variations, however, are not very significant and therefore should not have a negative impact on the expansion policies of the Italian wind farm in offshore areas expected for the next decades.

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