Abstract
Expected changes in climate are likely to affect the energy production from wind. This study investigates projected changes in wind energy production under a changing climate over West Africa using the ensemble of regional climate models. Wind power output (Pout) is estimated using the ensemble of seven regional climate models participating in the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) project. The ensemble mean of near-surface wind speed from the model simulations was compared with re-analysis datasets from ERA-5 between 1980 and 2005. While some biases were observed in the model performance over West Africa, the model ensemble provided a good representation of wind speed characteristics over the study region. The result shows that there is a potential reduction in energy produced up to 12% as a negative change is simulated in Pout in the near future (2021–2050) when compared to the reference period of 1971–2000. There is however a possible increment (about 24–30%) in power production in the far future (2071–2100) over most region of West Africa. In terms of variations of seasonal changes in Pout, there is more decline (− 8%) observed during the winter months of December to February (DJF) as compared to the summer season of June to August (JJA). The Sahel zone averaged wind power production up to 1.4 MW, while the Guinea and Savannah zones simulated lesser wind power output. In the Guinea region, an increasing inter-annual variability trend of up to 80% is estimated in Nigeria, Ghana, etc. towards the end of the century (2071–2100) as compared to historical years of 1971–2000. Our results provide a guide to government agencies and policymakers towards massive investment in harnessing wind energy in the future.
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Data availability
The datasets analysed during the current study are available in the WCRP repository, https://esg-dn1.nsc.liu.se/search/cordex/; and the ERA5 repository, https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/search?type=dataset.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the coordinating body of the CORDEX data, World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group for access to the CORDEX datasets. We also appreciate ECMWF for access to their reanalysis data used in this study. The Nordex and Vestas management are also appreciated for providing details of specific operational wind turbines on their web pages.
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No funding source was provided in the analysis and writing of the manuscript. All cost during the compilation of this research work was covered by the authors.
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The research idea was conceived by OKO: Research methodology was developed by OKO, AV and FAH: The research analysis was carried out by FAH: All authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.
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K.O, O., V.O, A., A.H, F. et al. Projected changes in wind energy potential using CORDEX ensemble simulation over West Africa. Meteorol Atmos Phys 134, 48 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-022-00880-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00703-022-00880-y