Potential effects of climate change and solar radiation modification on renewable energy resources

[Geoengineering News]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032124006609

Authors 

Andrew Kumler, Ben Kravitz, Caroline Draxl, Laura Vimmerstedt, Brandon Benton, Julie K. Lundquist, Michael Martin, Holly Jean Buck, Hailong Wang, Christopher Lennard, Ling Tao

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2024.114934

19 September 2024

Highlights

•Climate change is projected to have varying impacts on renewable energy sources.

•Solar radiation modification could also impact renewable energy sources, if applied.

•More research on solar radiation modification impacts on renewable energy is needed.

Abstract

Solar radiation modification (SRM) is a possible deliberate approach to decrease or reflect incoming solar radiation with the goal of reducing global temperatures, which have increased over the last decades due to high atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Stratospheric aerosol injection, specifically, has shown potential for successfully reducing global temperatures in climate model simulations. Despite the growing literature in the areas of climate change and SRM, their combined effects on renewable energy generation, a climate change mitigation strategy, have not been addressed. In this review paper, we synthesize previous literature on the possible effects of climate change and SRM on renewable energy resources (i.e., wind energy, solar energy, biomass energy, and hydropower), review the status of climate change and SRM research, and explore potential effects of SRM on renewable energy primarily in the Continental United States (CONUS), but with global perspectives as well. We discuss the research challenges and impacts of SRM on renewable energy and conclude by discussing the potential implications of SRM for renewables for SRM governance and policy. This work is not advocating for or against SRM. It is highlighting an important potential impact for future decision makers.

Fig. 3. Projected mean climate change (CC) and solar radiation modification (SRM) impacts on meteorological variables relevant to renewable energy for the Continental United States (CONUS) and globally, and potential changes in solar energy, wind energy, hydro energy, and bio energy. Results are based on the literature herein, but do not reflect the spatiotemporal complexity of each variable, where the sign of change could be different than presented here

Source: ScienceDirect 

[Michael MacCracken]

Dear Ben--I've not yet read the article but the results presented in the chart are for me, at least at first glance, a bit baffling.

How does CO2 go up when the world becomes cooler with SRM, which presumably leads to less use of fossil fuel energy which one would expect would lead to CO2 emissions going down?

While this is not the intent, the coloring code is strange in having temperature going up in green (though this generally viewed as detrimental) and temperature going down, which is beneficial, in brown, which is presumably good. It would seem that an alternative coloring scheme could have been chosen.

For precipitation, the coloring code is also strange, where higher precipitation, which tends to come most in intense storms is green, a color that is viewed as generally referring to something good, and going down is brown. Same with river runoff. What it would really have been nice to have is a comparison for soil moisture, level and stability.

And how is it that bio energy goes up whether one has SRM or not--is it that more global warming leads to more available dead vegetation as stress kills ecosystems, so more energy, whereas for SRM, there is more live vegetation, and this can be harvested to indicate more potential bio energy?

I also think the ordering of the columns makes the presentation of the results a bit harder to get a sense of. I'd like to have had the ordering be based on not SRM or SRM and then sub-breakdown based on scale, so global versus CONUS, rather than as ordered.

Best, Mike MacCracken

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