More homogeneous wind conditions under strong climate change decrease the potential for inter-state balancing of electricity in Europe

Limiting anthropogenic climate change requires the fast decarbonization of the electricity system. Renewable electricity generation is determined by the weather and is hence subject to climate change. We simulate the operation of a coarse-scale fully renewable European electricity system based on do...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEarth system dynamics Vol. 8; no. 4; pp. 1047 - 1060
Main Authors Wohland, Jan, Reyers, Mark, Weber, Juliane, Witthaut, Dirk
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Gottingen Copernicus GmbH 29.11.2017
Copernicus Publications
Subjects
Alternative energy sources
Anthropogenic climate changes
Anthropogenic factors
Circulation types
Climate
Climate change
Climate effects
Climate models
Climatic data
Electric power
Electric power generation
Electricity
Electricity distribution
Emissions
Energy
Environmental aspects
Environmental impact
Greenhouse gases
Human influences
Industrial plant emissions
Influence
Paris Agreement
Power plants
Solar energy
Time series
Transnationalism
Weather
Weather types
Wind
Wind power
Winds
Europe
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Summary:Limiting anthropogenic climate change requires the fast decarbonization of the electricity system. Renewable electricity generation is determined by the weather and is hence subject to climate change. We simulate the operation of a coarse-scale fully renewable European electricity system based on downscaled high-resolution climate data from EURO-CORDEX. Following a high-emission pathway (RCP8.5), we find a robust but modest increase (up to 7 %) of backup energy in Europe through the end of the 21st century. The absolute increase in the backup energy is almost independent of potential grid expansion, leading to the paradoxical effect that relative impacts of climate change increase in a highly interconnected European system. The increase is rooted in more homogeneous wind conditions over Europe resulting in intensified simultaneous generation shortfalls. Individual country contributions to European generation shortfall increase by up to 9 TWh yr−1, reflecting an increase of up to 4 %. Our results are strengthened by comparison with a large CMIP5 ensemble using an approach based on circulation weather types.
ISSN:2190-4987
2190-4979
2190-4987
DOI:10.5194/esd-8-1047-2017