期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2011
卷号：108
期号：20
页码：8167-8171
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1019388108
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：The energy sector comprises approximately two-thirds of global total greenhouse gas emissions. For this and other reasons, renewable energy resources including wind power are being increasingly harnessed to provide electricity generation potential with negligible emissions of carbon dioxide. The wind energy resource is naturally a function of the climate system because the "fuel" is the incident wind speed and thus is determined by the atmospheric circulation. Some recent articles have reported historical declines in measured near-surface wind speeds, leading some to question the continued viability of the wind energy industry. Here we briefly articulate the challenges inherent in accurately quantifying and attributing historical tendencies and making robust projections of likely future wind resources. We then analyze simulations from the current generation of regional climate models and show, at least for the next 50 years, the wind resource in the regions of greatest wind energy penetration will not move beyond the historical envelope of variability. Thus this work suggests that the wind energy industry can, and will, continue to make a contribution to electricity provision in these regions for at least the next several decades.
关键词：uncertainty ; wind energy density ; internal climate variability ; model evaluation ; temporal trends
