Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
parameters for operating current technologies eiciently under diferent environmen-
tal scenarios. For example, competition for water resources in key sectors such as ag-
riculture and energy, including biomass feedstock production, other renewables, and
thermal generation is likely to become more prevalent under most emissions scenarios
(UCS, 2011). As a result, more efort is going toward an improved, and more detailed,
understanding of water intensity of both renewable and thermal power technologies
(Macknick et al, 2011, Lux Research; 2009). These data and tools can help to inform sys-
tem level analyses to evaluate the portfolio of RE and thermal capacity in a region and
understand how this system can be managed in a climate impacted environment includ-
ing changes in hydrological cycles and luctuating RE resource availability. While most
of these analyses still focus primarily on existing technologies and storage options, it
is anticipated that the future direction of this work will focus on evaluating require-
ments for various technologies to eiciently operate under more variable environmental
parameters including ambient temperature, water availability, water temperature, and
humidity. For example, the ability to eiciently operate large scale PV and CSP in desert
environments will be impacted not just by the solar resource potential but also nega-
tively afected by the increase and severity of dust and sand storms, higher humidity im-
pacting solar radiation, and humidity efects on module performance and maintenance
requirements. Industry is starting to evaluate these types of operational impacts, but
there is still litle technology and site data to inform how to make these technologies less
vulnerable to climate change.
While downscaled climate projections still have serious challenges in accurately
representing future wind speeds, frequency distribution, and direction more detailed
work is being pursued on these topics (World Bank, 2011, p. 32). An improved level
of research and analysis of wind technology vulnerabilities to extreme weather events,
including high wind, hail, and icing, has also been carried out in recent years (Pryor and
Barthelmie, 2010, 2011a). This research, linked with site-speciic empirical data, will be
useful in informing local planning.
In the wind sector, there has also been a marked increase in the number of publica-
tions on variables afecting the vertical wind proile as well as site speciic assessments
of climate impacts on wind including wind potential shifts due to moisture and tem-
perature for existing ields and potential for permafrost areas (World Bank, 2011, p. 28;
Murphy, 2008). As industry moves toward increased hub height and developers have
greater lexibility in siting geographically and at which height, this type of data will be
critical. At same time, having clearer data on not just geographic shifts of resource but
also localized changes in the wind proile at various hub heights will be important to
both project performance for existing capacity and atracting inance for future invest-
ments in this sector. While it is true that the shorter life span of a wind installation may
make an accurate assessment of these impacts less critical (World Bank, 2011), these
farms often have signiicant sunk costs for permiting, siting, and transmission and po-
tentially storage so there is an economic incentive to fully understand long term wind
potential of a given site even if the initial technology may be changed out or retroited
over time.
A growing number of case studies from U.S., the Andes, and Africa that evaluate
power generation potentials related to hydrologic variations are also available (World
