China is the world’s largest generator of wind power and a team of researchers at the heart of the global wind industry has just discovered an inconvenient truth: weather-dependent sources of electricity are a bad bet when the climate is changing.
In an article published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, the Beijing and Shenzhen-based researchers find that around 20% of the globe’s wind turbines are located in areas that will become increasingly susceptible to “wind droughts” due to changing climactic conditions. As the name implies, wind droughts are sustained periods of uncharacteristically low gusts that render wind turbines useless. Even with aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers predict that these acute snaps of atmospheric stillness will become both more frequent and longer in a global geographic belt that stretches north of Houston to just south of Anchorage.
These findings will come as little surprise to utility operators across Western Europe, who are also located within the latitudinal wind lacuna. Germany, which has the largest wind fleet in Europe, was blighted by calm skies in March of this year. Electricity prices soared 48% higher relative to the preceding March and coal and natural gas plants carried the burden in Europe’s largest economy.
Inept during periods of calm, wind power also struggles in wild weather. The goldilocks requirements of wind were notably evident in Texas, which has the largest wind build-out of any state, during Winter Storm Uri of 2021. Though the storm drove down electricity generation across the board, nuclear, natural gas, and coal proved to be the most resilient sources of electricity during the assault on the Lone Star state’s grid.
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