Climate Change likely to negatively impact India’s Renewable Energy Production

At a time when India, like many other countries of the world, is increasingly looking to adopt renewable energy to achieve its ‘climate targets’, a study has concluded that climate change itself could negatively impact the country’s renewable energy production in the coming decades. India is planning to harness more and more renewable energy in the immediate future to adopt ‘clean energy’ and gradually reduce dependence on fossil fuels. As per the recently approved India’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), India is looking to achieve about 50 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030. 

According to a recent study titled, Analysis of future wind and solar potential over India using climate models, by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) Pune, Climate change is expected to impact future renewable energy production in India. Therefore, ‘investors in the renewable energy sector should understand and consider possible changes due to climate change,’ the study said. 

The study used various ‘climate models’ to make climate projections for different parts of the country over five decades. The availability of renewable energy sources in the future has been projected on the basis of the information provided by these models. 

In the study, the researchers analyzed the future wind and solar energy potential over the Indian landmass using climate model ensembles. The analyses revealed that ‘seasonal and annual wind speed is likely to decrease over North India and increase along South India in the future’. On the other hand, solar radiation is estimated to decrease (10–15 Wm–2) over the next 50 years during all seasons, according to the study. 

“The findings could be used by policy makers to take preventive measures to mitigate the actions which are leading to global warming and climate change. It could also help the energy sector in working towards more research and development in boosting the technical capabilities of solar and wind energy,” study co-author Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay said to  Mongabay-India.

How Climate Change affects Renewable Energy Production?

Wind and Solar Energy are two renewable energies that are most prone even to slight changes in atmospheric conditions and hence climate change is very likely to have an impact on them. 

Wind Energy and Climate Change

Slight variations of wind speed can change the wind energy drastically and also any change in wind shear and direction can significantly impact wind energy production. According to studies, changes in wind speed can reduce generation as turbines cannot operate in very high or very low winds. Changes in the daily or seasonal distribution of wind, changes in temperature, sea level rise and extreme weather events can also have an impact on wind energy production. 

A study conducted earlier found that the ‘warming of the Indian Ocean’ is likely to have an impact on the wind potential of India. The influence of climate on the future wind energy potential also has been studied globally in European countries. 

Solar Energy and Climate Change

Solar Energy is sensitive to climatic variables like changes in mean temperature, changes in solar irradiation and cloudiness, changes in dirt, dust, snow, atmospheric particles, wind speed, precipitation and extreme weather events. This makes Solar Energy sensitive to climatic variations and hence, climate change. Various studies have been conducted globally in this regard. 

Impacts

Solar

The analysis reveals that solar potential will decrease over most parts of the country in the near future. ‘Solar projections for the future indicate that solar radiation will decrease over most of the active solar farming regions in the country across all seasons,’ the study concludes. 

According to the solar potential regional analysis, ‘future projections predict a shift in the frequency of solar radiation in the negative direction, implying that solar energy production will decrease in the immediate future. The researchers attribute this to the increase in total cloud cover’.

Wind

Although wind potential shows an increasing trend over the onshore regions, a decreasing trend is seen over the offshore regions for the non-monsoon months. 

The study concludes that the ‘southern coast of Odisha and the southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu show promising potential for wind energy in the climate change scenario’. The study also finds that ‘the southern and northwestern regions of the country will have higher wind speeds in the winter and monsoon months when the wind potential is maximum’. 

According to the regional analysis of wind potential, ‘the frequency of high energy producing wind speeds will decrease, whereas low energy producing wind speeds are likely to increase in the future’.

Mitigation

The study suggests that including more efficient networks of wind and solar farms and using highly efficient power generators than the present ones can help in mitigating the negative impact of climate change on India’s renewable energy production scenario in the near future. 

‘For future investments in the solar power sector, central and south-central India must be considered during pre-monsoon months, as the potential loss is minimum in these regions,’ the study says.