Lack Of Wind Sparks New Fears Over Green-Energy Revolution

A lull in wind speeds over the summer was felt in boardrooms across Europe.

As it blew at its weakest for around 60 years, major energy companies lost millions of pounds in electricity sales.

By September, households started to feel the pain. Coal and gas-fired plants were switched on to make up for the loss of wind, compounding a global shortage of gas and pushing electricity prices to record levels.

“It’s very serious,” Mads Nipper, chief executive of Danish oil-turned-wind giant Orsted, told the Financial Times in August, as he warned shareholders of a hit to profits. “It is like you’re a farmer and it doesn’t rain.”

Countries are relying more on wind to meet their energy needs in the rush to slash carbon emissions. The technology accounts for more than 6% of global electricity and is set to grow as fossil fuels are muscled out of the way by cleaner sources. [It’s actually 2% of global electricity. CCD ed.]

In the UK, turbines on land and dotted around the coast generate about a quarter of domestic electricity over the year.

Boris Johnson wants to make wind the backbone of the energy system, with a huge increase in offshore turbines, as part of the legally binding push to net zero.

But events like the wind lull have triggered questions over whether it was a sign of things to come, and how predictable wind patterns are in the long term amid climate change.

It’s an area of growing corporate and scientific research, with huge consequences for energy security and business investment. But much remains unknown.

“Given what we saw in 2021, I think we will see and we need studies to understand [wind trends] better, especially given our increased reliance on wind as an energy source,” says Paul Williams, professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading.

Barely a gust

Scientists have identified a pattern of declining average wind speeds globally, averaging about one mile an hour every thirty years, based on wind speeds since the 1970s.

They point to climate change melting snow and ice in the Arctic, which is weakening the temperature difference between the Arctic and the Tropics, slowing down wind speeds.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which collates research from around the world, predicts with “medium confidence” that average wind speeds over land in large parts of Europe will fall by up to 10% in the summer months by 2100, under a scenario in which the world stays within its ambitious 1.5-degree global warming target limit.

The trend could have a serious impact. The relationship between speed and energy generation is “very sensitive”, adds Prof Williams.

“A 1% drop in wind speed can imply a 3% drop in energy generation. So if the IPCC is correct and there’s a 10% drop in wind speed – that can imply a 30% drop in energy generation.”

The picture is complicated, however. Long-term wind modeling is uncertain and some evidence also points the other way. “There are a good handful of models that say wind speeds could increase,” says Dr. Hannah Bloomfield, a research associate in climate risk analytics at the University of Bristol.

Having fallen after the 1970s, wind speeds have picked back up again since 2010, though this reversal is hard to explain, according to Adrian Chappell, professor in climate change impacts at Cardiff University.

Read more at The Sunday Telegraph