Winds of change: Climate change could hit wind power in Northern Hemisphere

Climate change could hamper wind-power production in the Northern Hemisphere over the next 100 years, a study has found – but countries below the Equator could benefit.

The work, which researchers from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute in the US called “the first of its kind”, analysed international and renewable industry predictions of winds and temperatures over the next century.

If carbon dioxide emissions continue at high levels, the researchers predict that the input available for windfarms will drop in the Northern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes, including North America, Japan, Mongolia and the Mediterranean. The decrease is expected because of rising temperatures at the North Pole, reducing the difference from the warm Equator and causing slower winds.

In the Southern Hemisphere, countries including Brazil, South Africa and Australia could benefit from a wind-power boom as land masses warm and intensify the temperature gradient with surrounding oceans.

Despite high adoption of wind-power technology in Europe, continued output is “a big question mark” because of uncertainty in international predictions, said lead author Kris Karnauskas.

The study comes during rapidly increasing wind-power capacity. Wind only accounts for 3.7% of worldwide energy consumption, but total capacity is increasing by 20% a year.

The study appeared in Nature Geoscience.