The impact of climate change on photovoltaic power generation in Europe.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26658608.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms10014 and PMC identifier 4682048.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Ambitious climate change mitigation plans call for a significant increase in the use of renewables, which could, however, make the supply system more vulnerable to climate variability and changes. Here we evaluate climate change impacts on solar photovoltaic (PV) power in Europe using the recent EURO-CORDEX ensemble of high-resolution climate projections together with a PV power production model and assuming a well-developed European PV power fleet. Results indicate that the alteration of solar PV supply by the end of this century compared with the estimations made under current climate conditions should be in the range (-14%;+2%), with the largest decreases in Northern countries. Temporal stability of power generation does not appear as strongly affected in future climate scenarios either, even showing a slight positive trend in Southern countries. Therefore, despite small decreases in production expected in some parts of Europe, climate change is unlikely to threaten the European PV sector.