The results of the project have managed to generate spatial scenarios of base and optimised energy facilities for both present and future scenarios (under different climate change scenarios)

The University of Murcia was a beneficiary in the 2017 Call for Grants for the implementation of projects in the field of adaptation to climate change with the project “Evolution of solar and wind energy resources in climate change scenarios at the service of adaptation in the energy sector”. The purpose of this project has been to contribute to the adaptation of the renewable-based energy sector to present and future climatic conditions (under different climate change scenarios), while promoting the efficiency and security of the electricity supply, as well as the sustainability and environmental commitment of the sector.

The energy sector, in the midst of a transition towards achieving adaptation goals, relies heavily on the planning and assessment of local renewable resources that are provided from scientific environments in an accurate and truthful manner. In the service of this, the results of the project have managed to generate spatial scenarios of base energy facilities and optimized for both present and future scenarios (under different climate change scenarios). Therefore, the project will be able to contribute to the adaptation of the renewable-based energy sector to present and future climatic conditions, while promoting the efficiency and security of the electricity supply, as well as the sustainability and environmental commitment of the sector.

The main objective of the project Evolution of solar and wind energy resources in climate change scenarios at the service of adaptation in the energy sector is to improve the understanding of the physical mechanisms and atmospheric behaviours that condition the solar and wind potential, their stationarity under climate change conditions and their applicability to the service of the energy sector. The community of climate modalizers, in charge of generating the present and future climate databases on which the studies of regional impacts of climate change are based, will benefit directly and immediately from the advances, both in knowledge and in technique, achieved with the results of this project. The data from the regional model ensemble have provided an extensive catalogue of data throughout the Iberian Peninsula with which to study the correlation between regions of the same type of potential and the complementarity between wind and photovoltaic regions. As for future projections, the results indicate that in the scenarios analysed, deviations in the annual production of photovoltaic solar energy are never greater than 5%, while in wind energy production there is a reduction of 10% in the most extreme cases. Regarding the complementarity of the energy resource in future scenarios, we can conclude that the changes in the complementarity of the resource are almost negligible and that they should not significantly affect the possible configurations that are established in the future of photovoltaic and solar installations.