Opinion: thousands of wind turbines in Europe may be useless

According to a recent study cited by Bloomberg, global warming reduces the wind speed in Europe in the summer, which further increases the load on the power systems of the Old World, which are facing a significant increase in electricity consumption for air conditioning and heating during the hot summer months.

According to climatologist Gan Zhang from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, this phenomenon is caused by an increase in temperature both on earth and in the troposphere — the layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth's surface.

It is predicted that the decrease in wind speed will be less than 5% in the period 2021-2050, however, even a small drop in it is likely to lead to serious fluctuations in wind power production, which will have a significant impact on wholesale prices. This creates a serious problem for European countries that have abandoned or are about to abandon coal and nuclear energy in favor of non-permanent renewable energy sources and, paradoxically, jeopardizes the goals The EU on decarbonization in the field of climate.

According to Christopher Vogel, a researcher in the field of wind and wave energy from the University of Oxford, the extremely strong effects of a decrease in wind speed underline a fundamental transformation in Europe, namely the transition from a temperature-dependent energy market to a market determined by the availability of wind and solar. He notes that the new study on the disappearance of long-term summer wind is consistent with other studies that suggest that the impact of climate change on wind will become statistically significant in the second half of the century.

However, it is still unclear how the change in average wind speed will affect future energy production, and part of the uncertainty is due to the lack of reliable historical data for climate modeling, according to Vogel, who studied the British "wind drought" of 2021, which forced the UK to restart decommissioned coal-fired power plants.

Wind measurements are strictly localized and depend on individual, topographic and other factors, including the presence and height of buildings, including the wind farms themselves. Despite the lack of data, wind energy production in Europe is already showing signs of decline due to climatic factors, said Ivan Fore Svegaarden from the Norwegian company TradeWpower AS, which provides energy traders with weather and climate advice.

"High pressure occurs more often and lasts longer," he said, pointing out that European energy policy relies too heavily on wind energy to achieve the EU's climate goals.