The impact of climate change on the U.S. wind energy resource

Daniel Kirk-Davidoff ; Daniel Barrie

关键词: Wind energy;    climate change;    regional climate modeling;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1069099
RP-ID  :  DOEER64650
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1069099

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

The growing need for low-carbon emitting electricity sources has resulted in rapid growth in the wind power industry. The size and steadiness of the offshore wind resource has attracted growing investment in the planning of offshore wind turbine installations. Decisions about the location and character of wind farms should be made with an eye not only to present but also future wind resource, which may change as increasing carbon dioxide forces reductions in the poleward temperature gradient, and thus potentially in the mean tropospheric westerly winds. I propose to use the new North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program climate projections to estimate the change of the wind power resource under various carbon dioxide loading scenarios and for a range of climate models. We will compare our assessment with both our assessment based on the IPCC AR4 model runs, to explore the extent to which improved model resolution changes the prediction for the wind power resource, and with present day estimates from reanalysis and scatterometer winds.