Powering up wind energy in a world of climate variability

Last year saw a record of wind energy installations across Europe, albeit still lower than needed to meet Europe’s 40% renewables target by the end of this decade. Nevertheless, the rush to achieve energy independence and the currently installed 236 GW and the 116GW (source: Wind Europe) planned for the next four years speak of Europe’s ambition to boost wind power. But how can the industry keep these ambitions high when winds are low?

In 2021, across parts of north-western and central Europe, wind speeds were unusually low, with some of the lowest speeds recorded in the last 40 years throughout the summer, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). In some places in the UK, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Germany, and Denmark annual wind speeds were even 10 per cent lower than the averages for the last 30 years, C3S data shows.

Figure 2. (Left) Annual average anomalies of 100 m wind speed in 2021, relative to the 1991–2020 reference period, by country. (Right) Time series of annual average 100 m wind speed anomalies for the five countries with the largest negative anomaly in 2021. In all plots, anomalies are expressed as percentages of the average for the 1991–2020 reference period. Data source: C3S Climate and energy indicators for Europe derived from ERA5.

“There were prolonged periods of high pressure in the Northern Atlantic around Europe” says Dr. Hannah Bloomfield, climate risk researcher at the University of Bristol, UK. “These are conditions that normally lead to low winds, we call them blocking events, when these masses of high-pressure air just sit there,” says Dr. Bloomfield, who adds that the UK repeatedly recorded such blockages over last summer. Scientists call these wind droughts, and although