Potential impacts of climate change on wind and solar electricity generation in Texas
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Potential impacts of climate change on wind and solar electricity generation in Texas Ignacio Losada Carreño 1,2 & Michael T. Craig 1,3 & Michael Rossol 1 & Moetasim Ashfaq 4 & Fulden Batibeniz 4 & Sue Ellen Haupt 5 & Caroline Draxl 1 & Bri-Mathias Hodge 1,6 & Carlo Brancucci 1,7 Received: 18 March 2019 / Accepted: 12 October 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
Wind and solar energy sources are climate and weather dependent, therefore susceptible to a changing climate. We quantify the impacts of climate change on wind and solar electricity generation under high concentrations of greenhouse gases in Texas. We employ mid-twenty-first century climate projections and a high-resolution numerical weather prediction model to generate weather variables in the future and produce wind and solar generation time series. We find that mid-twenty-first century projections based on five global climate models agree on the multiyear average increases across Texas in direct normal irradiance, global horizontal irradiance, surface air temperature, and 100-m wind speed of up to 5%, 4%, 10%, and 1%, respectively. These changes lead to multiyear average relative changes across Texas of − 0.6 to + 2.5% and of + 1.3 to + 3.5% in solar and wind capacity factors, respectively, with significant regional, seasonal, and diurnal differences. Areas with low solar resource show an increase in solar capacity factors but reductions in wind capacity factors. Areas with high solar resource show reductions in solar capacity factors. The spatial and temporal differences in our results highlight the importance of using high-resolution data sets to study the potential impacts of climate change on wind and solar power. Keywords Climate change . Wind power . Solar power
1 Introduction Through the end of the twenty-first century and beyond (Melillo et al. 2014), climate change will likely impact climate and weather as greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations increase
* Carlo Brancucci [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Climatic Change
(Marland et al. 2017). In 2016, the electric power sector represented more than 28% of total GHG emissions in the USA, making it the second highest primary source of emissions (EPA 2018). To decarbonize the US power system, federal and state policies and incentives, such as federal tax credits (Beck and Martinot 2004) and renewable portfolio standards (PUBLIC UTILITY COMMISSION OF TEXAS 1999); California Energy Comission 2011; New Mexico Public Regulation Commission 2006; Arizona Corporation Commission 2006), and subsequent cost reductions (International Energy Agency 2017) have led to significant growth in installed wind and solar capacity in recent years. As of 2017, installed wind and solar capacity in the USA surpassed 130 GW, representing more than 10% of total installed capacity, and reached 8% of total electricity generation (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2018). As more wind and solar capacity enter the power system, the impacts of climate chang
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