scholarly journals Uncertainty analysis of the future cost of wind energy on climate change mitigation

2021 ◽  
Vol 166 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklyn Kanyako ◽  
Erin Baker
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Dunlap

Providing a glimpse into the reality of wind energy development, the story of Álvaro Obregón is one of resistance. Álvaro Obregón is a primarily Zapotec semi-subsistence community located near the entrance of the Santa Teresa sand bar (Barra), where in 2011 Mareña Renovables initiated the process of building 102 wind turbines. Demonstrating the complicated micro-politics of land acquisition, conflict and unrest, this article argues that climate change mitigation initiatives are sparking land grabs and conflict with the renewed valuation of wind resources. Insurrection against the Mareña Renovables wind project has spawned a long-term conflict, which has created social divisions and a type of low-intensity civil war within the town. This article will chronicle the uprising against the wind company, battles with police, and the town hall takeover, which includes analyzing the conflict taking place between the cabildo comunitario and the constitucionalistas. Subsequent sections examine the different perspectives within the village and how this battle between the Communitarians and the wind company continues today. The article reveals the complications associated with land deals, the conflict generating potential of climate change mitigation practices and, finally, concludes by reflecting on the difficulties of formulating alternatives to development within a conflict situation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nektarios Chrysoulakis ◽  
Zina Mitraka ◽  
Mattia Marconcini ◽  
David Ludlow ◽  
Zaheer Khan ◽  
...  

<p>Resilience has become an important necessity for cities, particularly in the face of climate change. Mitigation and adaptation actions that enhance the resilience of cities need to be based on a sound understanding and quantification of the drivers of urban transformation and settlement structures, human and urban vulnerability, and of local and global climate change. Copernicus, as the means for the establishment of a European capacity for Earth Observation (EO), is based on continuously evolving Core Services. A major challenge for the EO community is the innovative exploitation of the Copernicus products in dealing with urban sustainability towards increasing urban resilience. Due to the multidimensional nature of urban resilience, to meet this challenge, information from more than one Copernicus Core Services, namely the Land Monitoring Service (CLMS), the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), the Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Emergency Management Service (EMS), is needed. Furthermore, to address urban resilience, the urban planning community needs spatially disaggregated environmental information at local (neighbourhood) scale. Such information, for all parameters needed, is not yet directly available from the Copernicus Core Services mentioned above, while several elements - data and products - from contemporary satellite missions consist valuable tools for retrieving urban environmental parameters at local scale. The H2020-Space project CURE (Copernicus for Urban Resilience in Europe) is a joint effort of 10 partners from 9 countries that synergistically exploits the above Copernicus Core Services to develop an umbrella cross-cutting application for urban resilience, consisting of individual cross-cutting applications for climate change adaptation/mitigation, energy and economy, as well as healthy cities and social environments, at several European cities. These cross-cutting applications cope with the required scale and granularity by also integrating or exploiting third-party data, in-situ observations and modelling. CURE uses DIAS (Data and Information Access Services) to develop a system capable of supporting operational applications and downstream services across Europe. The CURE system hosts the developed cross-cutting applications, enabling its incorporation into operational services in the future. CURE is expected to increase the value of Copernicus Core Services for future emerging applications in the domain of urban resilience, exploiting also the improved data quality, coverage and revisit times of the future satellite missions. Thus, CURE will lead to more efficient routine urban planning activities with obvious socioeconomic impact, as well as to more efficient resilience planning activities related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, resulting in improved thermal comfort and air quality, as well as in enhanced energy efficiency. Specific CURE outcomes could be integrated into the operational Copernicus service portfolio. The added value and benefit expected to emerge from CURE is related to transformed urban governance and quality of life, because it is expected to provide improved and integrated information to city administrators, hence effectively supporting strategies for resilience planning at local and city scales, towards the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda for Europe.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 2648
Author(s):  
Fahad Radhi Alharbi ◽  
Denes Csala

Climate change mitigation is one of the most critical challenges of this century. The unprecedented global effects of climate change are wide-ranging, including changing weather patterns that threaten food production, increased risk of catastrophic floods, and rising sea levels. Adapting to these impacts will be more difficult and costly in the future if radical changes are not made now. This review paper evaluates the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries’ potential for solar and wind energy resources to meet climate change mitigation requirements and assesses the ability of the GCC region to shift towards low-carbon technologies. The review demonstrates that the GCC region is characterized by abundant solar energy resources. The northwestern, southeastern, and western mountains of the region are highlighted as locations for solar energy application. Oman displays the highest onshore wind speed range, 3–6.3 m s⁻1, and has the highest annual solar radiation of up to 2500 kWh/m2. Kuwait has the second highest onshore wind speed range of 4.5–5.5 m s⁻1. The western mountains and northwestern Saudi Arabia have a wind speed range of 3–6 m s⁻1. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has the second highest annual solar radiation, 2285 kWh/m2, while Saudi Arabia and the state of Kuwait have equal annual solar radiation at 2200 kWh/m2. This review demonstrates that abundant offshore wind energy resources were observed along the coastal areas of the Arabian Gulf, as well as a potential opportunity for wind energy resource development in the Red Sea, which was characterized by high performance. In addition, the GCC countries will not be able to control and address the interrelated issues of climate change in the future if they do not eliminate fossil fuel consumption, adhere to the Paris Agreement, and implement plans to utilize their natural resources to meet these challenges.


Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Rebecca J. Barthelmie ◽  
Sara C. Pryor

Global wind resources greatly exceed current electricity demand and the levelized cost of energy from wind turbines has shown precipitous declines. Accordingly, the installed capacity of wind turbines grew at an annualized rate of about 14% during the last two decades and wind turbines now provide ~6–7% of the global electricity supply. This renewable electricity generation source is thus already playing a role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector. Here we document trends within the industry, examine projections of future installed capacity increases and compute the associated climate change mitigation potential at the global and regional levels. Key countries (the USA, UK and China) and regions (e.g., EU27) have developed ambitious plans to expand wind energy penetration as core aspects of their net-zero emissions strategies. The projected climate change mitigation from wind energy by 2100 ranges from 0.3–0.8 °C depending on the precise socio-economic pathway and wind energy expansion scenario followed. The rapid expansion of annual increments to wind energy installed capacity by approximately two times current rates can greatly delay the passing of the 2 °C warming threshold relative to pre-industrial levels. To achieve the required expansion of this cost-effective, low-carbon energy source, there is a need for electrification of the energy system and for expansion of manufacturing and installation capacity.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Dunlap

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of southwest Oaxaca, Mexico, known locally as the Istmo, was identified in 2003 as a prime site for wind energy development. Supported by climate change mitigation legislation, a ‘wind rush’ engulfed the Istmo. Now, La Ventosa sits surrounded by high-tension wires and wind turbines, some only 280 meters from homes. This paper argues that new valuations of wind resources based on market mechanisms and anthropogenic climate change laws are intensifying the destructive trajectory of the industrial economy. There are benefits for land owners and political authorities, and what amounts to token civil works projects for the town. But the majority of people interviewed expressed dissatisfaction towards the existence of wind parks surrounding the town. Instead of collective benefits, the wind parks brought different degrees of health concerns, enormous increases in land, rent, food, and electricity prices, as well as insecurity. The findings here demonstrate that wind energy development, encouraged by climate change mitigation policies, is intensifying pre-existing trends towards inequality and poverty in La Ventosa. Meanwhile, the destructive operations of the global industrial economy are renewed, using market-based approaches to mitigating anthropogenic climate change.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 3341
Author(s):  
Hongjie Sun ◽  
Shuwen Niu ◽  
Xiqiang Wang

Mitigating climate change and ensuring regional equity development is equitable are matters of global concern. Systematic and in-depth research into theseissues is seldom conducted. In this research we combine qualitative and quantitative studies and use six state-of-the-art energy-economy analysis models and four long term scenarios to explore the distribution of regional contributions for climate change mitigation in the future. We focus on the energy investment gap and policy cost. The study’s conclusion is that, under the assumption of carbon tax as a source of energy investment from 2025, the global positive energy investment gap in the climate change mitigation scenario will not appear until around 2035–2040. Asia and OECD90+EU (Countries from the OECD 1990, EU and its candidates) are the regions that will have a significant direct impact on the global energy investment gap under climate policies in the future. However, from the perspective of the relative value (the percentage of the energy investment gap relative to the energy investment in the Current Policies (CPol) scenario), Asia will contribute the most to the global energy investment gap under the climate stability policies. Under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) scenario, Asia will contribute the most in the near term and REF will contribute the most in the medium term.The findings show that OECD90+EUwill bear more cost in the pledges scenario, and Asia will bear more cost in the climate stability scenarios in the medium term. Contrary to the common sense expectation, the developed regions will contribute the least in terms of the proportion of the policy cost to the respective economic aggregates under the climate stability scenarios in the medium and long term, but the opposite is true in the developing regions. By and large, from the perspective of the current climate change mitigation policies, the developed regions and developing regions will achieve a win-win situation in the long run, but the relative contribution of the developed regions is not as great as was previously expected. These novel findings should prove to be useful to policy makers when developing transition strategies for climate change mitigation.


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