Wind energy contributes significantly to the energy sector’s sustainable, low-CO2 transformation.
Wind energy contributes significantly to the energy sector’s sustainable, low-CO2 transformation. However, the efficiency of wind turbines depends on available wind resources and the technical characteristics of the turbines.
Climate change, of all things, is causing the global wind resource to diminish in the 21st century. At the same time, the technical properties of wind turbines are steadily improving. Based on global climate models and newly developed techno-projections, researchers Dr. Christopher Jung and Prof. Dr. Dirk Schindler were able to estimate these two opposing influencing factors and calculate their impact on the global and regional efficiency of wind turbines by 2060.
One finding is that the efficiency of the global wind turbine fleet could increase by as much as 23.5 percent by 2035, assuming favorable climate trends, if the use of wind energy were optimized. The findings of the two scientists from the Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Freiburg were published in the journal Nature Energy.
Read more at University of Freiburg
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