TY  - JOUR
AU  - Wohland, Jan
AU  - Reyers, Mark
AU  - Weber, Juliane
AU  - Witthaut, Dirk
TI  - More homogeneous wind conditions under strong climate change decrease the potential for inter-state balancing of electricity in Europe
JO  - Earth System Dynamics
VL  - 8
IS  - 4
SN  - 2190-4987
CY  - Göttingen
PB  - Copernicus Publ.
M1  - FZJ-2017-07886
SP  - 1047 - 1060
PY  - 2017
AB  - Limiting anthropogenic climate change requires the fast decarbonization of the electricity system. Renewable electricity generation is determined by the weather and is hence subject to climate change. We simulate the operation of a coarse-scale fully renewable European electricity system based on downscaled high-resolution climate data from EURO-CORDEX. Following a high-emission pathway (RCP8.5), we find a robust but modest increase (up to 7 %) of backup energy in Europe through the end of the 21st century. The absolute increase in the backup energy is almost independent of potential grid expansion, leading to the paradoxical effect that relative impacts of climate change increase in a highly interconnected European system. The increase is rooted in more homogeneous wind conditions over Europe resulting in intensified simultaneous generation shortfalls. Individual country contributions to European generation shortfall increase by up to 9 TWh yr−1, reflecting an increase of up to 4 %. Our results are strengthened by comparison with a large CMIP5 ensemble using an approach based on circulation weather types.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000416491100001
DO  - DOI:10.5194/esd-8-1047-2017
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/840344
ER  -