Impact of climate change: challenges and opportunities for onshore wind energy in Europe

In the Net Zero Emissions Scenario, the vast majority of electrical energy will be supplied by renewable sources, including wind energy. Wind turbine’s power output depends on ambient conditions, i.e., wind speed and air density, which are expected to vary in the future due to climate change. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the impact of climate change on onshore wind energy in Europe, by considering forty-three countries with a very high geographical resolution. In this paper, the period from years 1998-2002 is used as the benchmark, while ambient conditions in years 2048-2052 are predicted for three scenarios that assume different concentrations of greenhouse gas emissions. The results quantitatively highlight the influence of climate change on wind energy. In fact, both wind energy density and power output vary in the range ±20 %, but even more remarkable variations (from -70 % to +150 %) may also occur in some areas. More in detail, climate change will mainly challenge Central Europe, where wind energy potential reduces up to -40 %, whereas it is an opportunity for Southern and Northern Europe, as onshore wind energy will become more attractive (up to +150 %).