Climate change extremes and photovoltaic power output

Sarah Feron, Raúl R. Cordero (), Alessandro Damiani and Robert B. Jackson
Additional contact information
Sarah Feron: Universidad de Santiago de Chile
Raúl R. Cordero: Universidad de Santiago de Chile
Alessandro Damiani: Chiba University
Robert B. Jackson: Stanford University

Nature Sustainability, 2021, vol. 4, issue 3, 270-276

Abstract: Abstract Sustainable development requires climate change mitigation and thereby a fast energy transition to renewables. However, climate change may affect renewable power outputs by enhancing the weather variability and making extreme conditions more frequent. High temperature or clouds, for example, can lead to poorer photovoltaic (PV) power outputs. Here, we assess global changes in the frequency of warm and cloudy conditions that lead to very low PV power outputs. Using simulations from global climate models (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), we show that summer days with very low PV power outputs are expected to double in the Arabian Peninsula by mid-century but could be reduced by half in southern Europe over the same period, even under a moderate-emission scenario. Changes for winter, either enhancing or mitigating the PV power intermittency, are projected to be less striking, at least in low- and mid-latitude regions. Our results present valuable information for energy planners to compensate for the effects of future weather variability.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00643-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natsus:v:4:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1038_s41893-020-00643-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-00643-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().