An increased rollout of onshore wind turbines across Europe could technically provide the continent with more than 10 times its existing electricity needs, according to a new paper.

To make their estimate, a team of German researchers took into account changing wind speeds, all the available land and, crucially, futuristic turbine designs that are already coming onto the market.

While they note that generating 100% of Europe’s power from wind would not actually be feasible due to social, economic and political constraints, the scientists say their estimate gives a “significantly higher” figure than most previous assessments of wind potential.

Their paper, published in the journalEnergy, also suggests that, as technology advances, the cost of the resulting electricity will be cheaper than previous studies have estimated.

Some nations, including the UK,have struggledwith political opposition to onshore wind. However, with the EU facing ambitious climate targets in the coming years, wind is expected to be thebiggest contributor到该地区的电源不到十年。

Renewable goals

在它所有于，与1990年相比，欧盟旨在将温室气体排放量减少80-95％，而1990年安装压力on member states to agree to anet-zerotarget.

Achieving these goalswill require整个大陆的巨大转移到可再生电源。德国已经pledged几乎完全转换为本世纪域的可再生能源。

Wind – particularly onshore wind – is expected to make a significant contribution to these targets. TheInternational Energy Agency’s（IEA）World Energy Outlook去年的束缚能源被设定为超越煤炭，核能和天然气，并将欧盟最大的电源成为2027年。

However, as demonstrated by the UK – where cuts to government subsidies and tighter planning rules haveeffectively blocked自2015年以来，陆上风的进步 - 政治，社会和经济因素对这项技术的未来增加了显着的不确定性。

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安装第一个Vestas V136-3.45MW®涡轮机。Credit:Vestas

各种各样的studieshave attempted to estimate the wind capacity of the entire continent, adding to the body of evidence concerning the technology’s feasibility. These studies take into account factors such as weather patterns and hypothetical locations for windfarms to gauge the maximum potential wind power has across the region.

这些研究往往估计欧元pean capacity of between around 8 and 12 terawatts (TW), which would result in a total annual generation of between16.and 21 petawatt hours (PWh）。鉴于欧洲的年发电 - 根据BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy– is just 3.6PWh, this already vastly exceeds the amount required on the continent.

However, in their new paper the authors explain that they think this is an underestimate when considering future wind generation potential in Europe.

Futuristic designs

The figure the researchers arrive at is 13.4TW of installable wind capacity across Europe, only marginally higher than previous estimates.

然而，大步升起来自估计年度年代发电潜力，即34.3倍。这是13pwh高于其他科学家所做的最近估计，而且功率比BP数据在今天的使用量增加了10倍。

In their paper, the authors attribute this discrepancy partly to their methods of identifying eligible land for windfarm construction and estimating weather. Crucially, they also emphasise their focus on futuristic turbine designs of the type that are expected to become standard in the coming years.

David Severin Ryberg, a PhD student at theForschungszentrum Jülichin North Rhine-Westphalia who led the study, explains to Carbon Brief why this is so important:

“The use of futuristic turbine designs has a major impact on the outcome of these generation potential investigations and, by extension, will drastically change the result of hypothetical energy system design efforts.”

Over the past decade, there has been asteady increase在汽轮机容量、中心高度和转子直径, and these trends are expected to continue. While other studies have used contemporary turbines as their baseline, Ryberg and his colleagues chose instead to use a futuristic turbine that they think will be widespread by 2050.

They say its features represent “conservative estimates” of future norms based on the historical rate of change and note that such a design aligns with a projectiondescribed as“likely” by the IEA. Furthermore, such turbines already exist in the form of theVestas V136, 4.2MWwind turbine, whichmade its debutearlier this year in Denmark’s first subsidy-free windfarm.

Andrew Canning from trade associationWindEuropetells Carbon Brief it is “highly likely” that “better, more efficient and more powerful turbines” will continue to emerge in the near future:

“我们肯定看到过去几年的趋势，风力涡轮机变得越来越高效。他们肯定地长大了，但它们也变得更加高效。他们可以在较慢和更高的风速下工作，使它们更捕获更多的风时间，这意味着它们会产生更多的电力[给定安装的容量]。“

这些较新的涡轮机有可能在“repowering“也是现有的风钵。这是旧风蝇的涡轮机在他们的生命结束时更换，较新且往往更大的模型。

Canning notes the case ofEl Carbitoonshore windfarm in Spain, which saw its power capacity boosted from 22.8MW to 31MW after 90 first generation turbines were replaced with 15 new ones.

Location and cost

To undertake their analysis, the researchers first ruled out everywhere that was unsuitable for windfarm construction. This included excluding 800m zones around all settlements and 1.2km zones around the most densely populated areas. More exclusion zones were placed around a wide variety of locations, ranging from airports and power lines to protected bird habitats and campsites.

Even after this effort, the researchers were left with a total area of 1.3 million square kilometres – roughly a quarter of Europe’s entire land area – where windfarms could theoretically be built. This is within roughly the same range as past studies.

They then used an algorithm to identify the maximum number of installation sites for turbines and a simulation to determine the hourly generation at those sites over the course of a 37-year lifespan.

Average annual wind capacity factor mapped across Europe, not including any consideration of how suitable land is for windfarms. (Ryberg et al., 2019)

This is where the new projection diverges from previous studies. The combination of increased overall capacity and increased efficiency of the new turbines means it estimates a far higher generation potential. The authors note this significant uptick is not distributed evenly across Europe, with nations benefiting from strong winds, such as the UK, Denmark and Ireland, seeing the biggest potential gains.

Ryberg and his team also consider the cost of wind power under European renewable energy scenarios that have been outlined in the literature. They find that futuristic turbines were able to produce electricity at a cheaper rate than contemporary designs, in part due to their ability to withstand lulls in wind speed better and, therefore, operate with less backup storage. Even in areas where the most windfarms are constructed, they conclude that electricity costs from wind are unlikely to exceed €0.06 per kWh (5p), the study says.

The future of wind

Ryberg指出,他们的论文是基于一个假说etical situation. While they were careful to exclude unrealistic turbines built “on top of a school”, for example, that does not mean a quarter of Europe would ever realistically be covered in windfarms. He explains why he does not think Europe is heading towards en entirely wind-driven future:

“这种技术一代潜力的大部分都不会在经济上具有吸引力。此外，地理空间分布与所有能源需求区域不完全对应 - 例如，我们在瑞典找到了高的风力发电潜力，与德国，法国，意大利和英国相比具有相对低的能源需求。除了this, the ‘间歇性’ of wind is a well-known concept which could make an all-wind European energy system costly – due to energy storage and transmission requirements – and difficult to manage.”

However, this does not mean the paper lacks real-world implications. While politicians in placessuch as Polandand the UK have resisted onshore wind in recent years, Canning says polls show the European public to be “overwhelmingly” in favour of the technology.

Ryberg和他的团队进行的这项研究表明，这不仅是一种广泛的风力推出，它可能很便宜。Canning表示，这些事实“为自己说话”，并应影响制定其全国能源和气候计划的政治家的决定，以达到欧洲排放目标。

Ryberg说，只有现有的涡轮机设计在试图衡量未来的系统供电时可能会向他们的设计增加偏见，让人们投资于任何传统上“强烈”的地点，用于风力。利用他的团队更新的仿真，他解释了范围可能更广泛：

“由于政策制定者必须依赖这些假设的能源系统评估，以便于他们的决定，很明显，使用未来派涡轮机设计应该导致欧洲风能部门的进一步扩散和支持。”