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International Researchers Explore New Territory in the Grand Challenges of Wind Energy Science

Nrel researchers led a report tackling atmospheric science, turbine technology, grid integration, environmental codesign, and social science.

Paul Veers, an NREL wind energy research fellow, led a 2023 International Energy Agency Topical Expert Meeting on the five grand challenges of wind energy and the ways in which those challenges intersect. The findings from this meeting informed a new NREL report. Photo by Werner Slocum, NREL

Wind energy— one of the fastest-growing and lowest-cost sources of electricity in the world —will play an important role in the transition to a carbon-free energy system. However, wind energy’s growth must be planned with careful consideration of atmospheric physics, turbine design, and grid resilience, as well as environmental and social impacts. Finding solutions to these types of challenges will require experts to collaborate across their disciplines.

That is the thesis of a new report co-authored by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) along with global industry and academic experts. The report, Grand Challenges Revisited: Wind Energy Research Needs for a Global Energy Transition , follows a 2019 article published in the journal Science , which outlined three grand challenges of wind energy research. Broadly speaking, these original three challenges focused on our inadequate understanding of and inability to accurately model atmospheric physics, wind turbine technology, and wind power plant integration into the grid.

The new report expands those three original challenges to five:

• Wind atmospheric science
• Wind turbine systems
• Wind plants and grid
• Environmental codesign
• Social science.

For wind energy to realize its role in the clean energy transition and supply 50% of future global energy needs, experts from many different disciplines will need to collaborate to tackle wind energy’s interconnected challenges. These challenges, illustrated above, include wind atmospheric science, wind turbine systems, environmental co-design, social science, and wind plants and the grid. Illustration by Taylor Henry, NREL

“Three grand challenges were a grand start,” said Paul Veers , an NREL research fellow and report co-author. “But readers of the 2019 Science article pointed out that we had neglected to consider the environmental and social challenges of wind energy development. Recognizing our oversight, we incorporated these additional challenges into our expanded vision.”

To further explore these five grand challenges and their intersections, Veers and his colleagues convened an International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Energy Topical Expert Meeting in February 2023. Grand Challenges Revisited summarizes the key findings from that meeting.

Charting the Course for a Complex System

Many countries around the world, including the United States, have set ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A first step toward these goals will be to transition to renewable sources of energy, like wind, in the next few decades.

However, for wind energy to assume its role in the clean energy transition, the industry must address critical issues around the design, development, and deployment of wind turbines and power plants. In addition, as wind energy deployment increases, so will its environmental and social impacts.

“Wind energy is complicated,” Veers said. “It comes with technical, environmental, and social challenges that intersect and cut across discipline boundaries.”

To help address wind energy’s dynamic opportunities for expansion to meet global energy demand, IEA meeting participants examined the cross-disciplinary issues created by the intersections between the five grand challenges. For Veers and his colleagues, these issues highlight a need to integrate social, environmental, economic, and technical elements into wind turbine and plant design before they are built.

“For example, a prospective wind farm site may also be near an eagle population, and wind turbines pose a risk to eagles,” Veers explained. “That means the wind turbines and farm need to be designed in a way that minimizes that risk while still maintaining optimal power generation—and that means you need to integrate knowledge about eagle behavior with knowledge about plant optimization.”

Designing wind energy facilities to minimize risk to wildlife like this bald eagle while still maintaining optimal power production is one example of a wind energy challenge that requires interdisciplinary expertise. Photo by Dennis Schroeder, NREL

Common Needs Across All Grand Challenges

Through their discussions, all groups at the IEA meeting observed three issues that all five challenges have in common, which are:

• A lack of understanding of basic concepts and terminology between wind energy disciplines, creating a need for cross-disciplinary education
• The challenge of aggregating and managing vast datasets while safeguarding intellectual property, which presents yet-to-be-realized opportunities to leverage existing data through digitization
• That opportunities for discussion, like the IEA Topical Expert Meeting, are rare and sparsely located but are highly enlightening.

“It turned out these experts enjoyed talking to each other across the boundaries of their disciplines,” Veers said. “There aren’t many places where these different experts can come together, so doing that intentionally should be a goal.”

The Turbine’s Continued Evolution

The IEA meeting discussions also served as a reminder that wind energy still has lots of room for innovation.

For Veers and his colleagues, supporting the continued advancement of the wind turbine will require a holistic approach to design that considers metrics beyond levelized cost of energy (the ratio of costs expended to energy produced). Those designs need to incorporate intelligent control systems, which enhance turbine awareness and operational efficiency. Researchers need to step back and think about how these turbines are made, which will help improve industrial-scale turbine production, enhance recyclability, avoid the use of critical materials, and reduce manufacturing costs.

“The current success of the wind turbine does not mean it's a done technology any more than the success of the Model T meant the car was a done technology in 1920,” Veers said. “Current wind turbines work and are cost-effective, but the demands of the future will be very different from what they are today and from what they have been in the past. The evolution of the wind turbine is still a major area of opportunity.”

Wind energy still has plenty of room to evolve. Holistic turbine design, intelligent turbine control systems, and improved industrial-scale turbine production are and will continue to be key opportunities for innovation. Photo by Josh Bauer and Bryan Bechtold

Now that the participants at the IEA Wind meetings have identified the critical issues at the intersections of wind energy’s grand challenges, the next step will be to develop solutions necessary for the substantial expansion of wind energy.

Veers and his co-authors' findings offer the basis for a five-year roadmap for international collaborative research, which will help enable wind energy to fulfill its role in the clean energy transition.

Learn more about the Grand Challenges . Be sure to subscribe to NREL’s wind energy newsletter for more news like this.

Heat, cold extremes hold untapped potential for solar and wind energy

Conditions that usually accompany the kind of intense hot and cold weather that strains power grids may also provide greater opportunities to capture solar and wind energy.

A Washington State University-led study found that widespread, extreme temperature events are often accompanied by greater solar radiation and higher wind speeds that could be captured by solar panels and wind turbines. The research, which looked at extensive heat and cold waves across the six interconnected energy grid regions of the U.S. from 1980-2021, also found that every region experienced power outages during these events in the past decade.

The findings, detailed in the journal Environmental Research Letters , suggest that using more renewable energy at these times could help offset increased power demand as more people and businesses turn on heaters or air conditioners.

"These extreme events are not going away anytime soon. In fact, every region in the U.S. experiences at least one such event nearly every year. We need to be prepared for their risks and ensure that people have reliable access to energy when they need it the most," said lead author Deepti Singh, a Washington State University climate scientist."Potentially, we could generate more power from renewable resources precisely when we have widespread extreme events that result in increased energy demand."

The study showed increased solar energy potential in all six U.S. regions during heat extremes, and in all but one region during cold ones, the area covered by the Texas-run grid. The researchers noted that atmospheric ridges or atmospheric high-pressure systems that cause intense heat, like the heat wave that hit the Pacific Northwest in 2021, are often characterized by cloudless, blue skies. Clear skies allow more of the sun's radiation to reach the Earth, which could be converted into power by solar panels.

Conditions for wind power were more variable, but at least three regions had increased potential to capture this type of energy during these hot and cold events: the Northeast during widespread cold, and both the Texas grid and a major Midwestern grid during heat waves.

For this analysis, Singh and her colleagues used long-term historical climate data along with power outage data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The researchers specifically looked at large heat and cold waves as opposed to localized events because they can impose greater stress across the entire power grid.

Previous research has shown that climate change is changing the characteristics of temperature extremes. Adding to that evidence, this analysis showed that large heat waves are increasing in frequency, particularly across the Western U.S. and Texas grids, rising by 123% and 132% respectively. In the West, they are also increasing in intensity, duration and extent, meaning that they are hotter, last longer and affect a larger area.

On the other hand, cold extremes are declining in frequency yet have remained mostly the same in terms of intensity, duration and extent. A notable example is the costly February 2021 cold wave that blanketed nearly the entire country. The event caused an estimated $24 billion in damage, including multiple days of power outages in Texas, and resulted in 226 deaths, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report.

Whether there were outages or not, all regions experience increased energy demand during such temperature extremes, and this strains their power grids, showing a need for alternate solutions.

Expanding solar and wind energy has the potential to improve the resilience of energy systems during extreme events to minimize service disruptions and associated adverse impacts, which are often felt the hardest among vulnerable, overburdened communities, said Singh. In addition to increasing climate resilience of the country's energy infrastructure, she also pointed out these renewable energy sources have multiple benefits.

"At the very least, solar and wind power do one other major thing: reduce air pollution that is associated with burning fossil fuels and is really bad for our health and the health of our ecosystems," she said. "Solar and wind are also conducive to having a more distributed energy system. They can be installed closer to communities where they're used, which can help advance energy equity and access."

This study identifies only the potential of solar and wind energy to help shore up power grids, the authors noted. More research and development would be needed to increase the resilience of energy grids to climate variability and extremes.

"There is complexity here because we have to think about vulnerabilities in transmission and distribution infrastructure as well as the environmental impact of expanding solar and wind systems, but hopefully these benefits can give us additional reasons to accelerate our transition towards renewable energy," said Singh. "There are also technological improvements that could help ensure that we can leverage renewable energy when it's needed. The capacity is there."

This study received support from the National Science Foundation and WSU.

• Solar Energy
• Wind Energy
• Energy Technology
• Renewable Energy
• Energy and the Environment
• Environmental Science
• Energy Issues
• Environmental Policies
• Ocean Policy
• Renewable energy
• Radiant energy
• Solar power
• Solar panel
• Alternative fuel vehicle
• Wind turbine

Story Source:

Materials provided by Washington State University . Original written by Sara Zaske. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Deepti Singh, Yianna S Bekris, Cassandra D W Rogers, James Doss-Gollin, Ethan D Coffel, Dmitri A Kalashnikov. Enhanced solar and wind potential during widespread temperature extremes across the U.S. interconnected energy grids . Environmental Research Letters , 2024; 19 (4): 044018 DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad2e72

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International researchers explore new territory in the grand challenges of wind energy science

by Tara McMurtry, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Wind energy—one of the fastest-growing and lowest-cost sources of electricity in the world—will play an important role in the transition to a carbon-free energy system. However, wind energy's growth must be planned with careful consideration of atmospheric physics, turbine design, and grid resilience, as well as environmental and social impacts. Finding solutions to these types of challenges will require experts to collaborate across their disciplines.

That is the thesis of a new report co-authored by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) along with global industry and academic experts. The report, " Grand Challenges Revisited: Wind Energy Research Needs for a Global Energy Transition ," follows a previous report published in the journal Science , which outlined three grand challenges of wind energy research.

Broadly speaking, these original three challenges focused on our inadequate understanding of and inability to accurately model atmospheric physics, wind turbine technology, and wind power plant integration into the grid.

The new report expands those three original challenges to five:

• Wind atmospheric science
• Wind turbine systems
• Wind plants and grid
• Environmental codesign
• Social science.

"Three grand challenges were a grand start," said Paul Veers, an NREL research fellow and report co-author. "But readers of the 2019 Science article pointed out that we had neglected to consider the environmental and social challenges of wind energy development. Recognizing our oversight, we incorporated these additional challenges into our expanded vision."

To further explore these five grand challenges and their intersections, Veers and his colleagues convened an International Energy Agency (IEA) Wind Energy Topical Expert Meeting in February 2023. Grand Challenges Revisited summarizes the key findings from that meeting.

Charting the course for a complex system

Many countries around the world, including the United States, have set ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A first step toward these goals will be to transition to renewable sources of energy, like wind, in the next few decades.

However, for wind energy to assume its role in the clean energy transition, the industry must address critical issues around the design, development, and deployment of wind turbines and power plants. In addition, as wind energy deployment increases, so will its environmental and social impacts .

"Wind energy is complicated," Veers said. "It comes with technical, environmental, and social challenges that intersect and cut across discipline boundaries."

To help address wind energy's dynamic opportunities for expansion to meet global energy demand, IEA meeting participants examined the cross-disciplinary issues created by the intersections between the five grand challenges. For Veers and his colleagues, these issues highlight a need to integrate social, environmental, economic, and technical elements into wind turbine and plant design before they are built.

"For example, a prospective wind farm site may also be near an eagle population, and wind turbines pose a risk to eagles," Veers explained. "That means the wind turbines and farm need to be designed in a way that minimizes that risk while still maintaining optimal power generation—and that means you need to integrate knowledge about eagle behavior with knowledge about plant optimization."

Common needs across all grand challenges

Through their discussions, all groups at the IEA meeting observed three issues that all five challenges have in common, which are:

• A lack of understanding of basic concepts and terminology between wind energy disciplines, creating a need for cross-disciplinary education
• The challenge of aggregating and managing vast datasets while safeguarding intellectual property , which presents yet-to-be-realized opportunities to leverage existing data through digitization
• That opportunities for discussion, like the IEA Topical Expert Meeting, are rare and sparsely located but are highly enlightening.

"It turned out these experts enjoyed talking to each other across the boundaries of their disciplines," Veers said. "There aren't many places where these different experts can come together, so doing that intentionally should be a goal."

The turbine's continued evolution

The IEA meeting discussions also served as a reminder that wind energy still has lots of room for innovation.

For Veers and his colleagues, supporting the continued advancement of the wind turbine will require a holistic approach to design that considers metrics beyond levelized cost of energy (the ratio of costs expended to energy produced). Those designs need to incorporate intelligent control systems, which enhance turbine awareness and operational efficiency.

Researchers need to step back and think about how these turbines are made, which will help improve industrial-scale turbine production, enhance recyclability, avoid the use of critical materials, and reduce manufacturing costs.

"The current success of the wind turbine does not mean it's a done technology any more than the success of the Model T meant the car was a done technology in 1920," Veers said. "Current wind turbines work and are cost-effective, but the demands of the future will be very different from what they are today and from what they have been in the past. The evolution of the wind turbine is still a major area of opportunity."

Now that the participants at the IEA Wind meetings have identified the critical issues at the intersections of wind energy's grand challenges , the next step will be to develop solutions necessary for the substantial expansion of wind energy.

Veers and his co-authors' findings offer the basis for a five-year roadmap for international collaborative research, which will help enable wind energy to fulfill its role in the clean energy transition.

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Wind energy and sustainable electricity generation: evidence from Germany

Sakiru adebola solarin.

1 School of Economics, University of Nottingham Malaysia Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Malaysia

Mufutau Opeyemi Bello

2 Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Economics, University of Ilorin, PMB 1515, Ilorin, Nigeria

Wind energy is one of the renewable energy sources that has been touted to address the challenges of energy security and environmental degradation. This is only attainable if countries with substantial wind energy potential use it in significant proportion to satisfy their energy needs. One promising sector where wind energy can be employed to actualize this potential is the electricity sector. However, the current reality is that fossil fuels still dominate the energy profiles of most economies of the world, including the advanced economies, with wind renewable energy source accounting for a very small proportion of the energy mix. Germany is one of the few countries that offers promising opportunities in deploying wind energy to its full potentials. This study therefore explores the feasibility of substituting wind energy for nuclear energy and other fossil fuels using Germany as a country of focus. We use the ridge regression procedure to analyse yearly time series data for the German power sector that spans the period 1986 to 2018. With respect to output elasticities of the energy inputs, the results reveal that wind and natural gas have positive output elasticity estimates while the estimates for nuclear and coal are negative. We also found that all the inputs pairs have positive substitution elasticity estimates between them. With respect to wind energy, the highest substitutability estimate occurred with nuclear power which is followed by natural gas and then coal. The study recommended that policies such as granting of tax credit for wind energy technology, reduction in property taxes for wind power facilities, and allocation of fund for research and development (R&D) in wind energy technology are recommended to promote the use of wind energy in the economy.

Introduction

The growing importance of renewable energy, especially among the developed countries, is expected to lead to reduction in fossil fuels in the energy mix which will eventually lead to decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. This is because fossil fuels usage generates emissions, while renewable energy sources are widely regarded as carbon neutral. One form of renewable energy that can be used to generate electricity is wind energy. Wind is a widely available source of energy. Wind energy is a green source of power because wind turbine does not directly generate emissions, thereby assisting nations to achieve their emission reduction goals and tackling climate change. It has been shown that wind energy consumption leads to a decrease in CO2 emissions (Kuskaya and Bilgili, 2020 ). The usage of wind energy reduces the need for water consumption in the process of electricity generation. Relative to nuclear power, wind energy is a less expensive source of energy.

Unlike nuclear energy, the usage of wind energy is not associated with major disasters. Wind power has lower maintenance and operational costs compared to nuclear power. Kyshtym disaster of 1957, Chernobyl disaster of 1986, Tokaimura nuclear accident of 1999 and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011 are some of the major nuclear disasters that have been experienced over the years. These disasters have led to several deaths as well as clean-up costs running into several millions of dollars. Exposure to nuclear materials such as uranium can generate health risks. Wind energy consumption can promote economic growth as the promotion of renewable energy use can attract energy-related investment from both local and foreign investors. For instance, global offshore wind investment in the globe increased quadrupled in the first 6 months of 2020 (which amounts to $35bn) despite being a coronavirus pandemic ravaged period (The Guardian, 2020 ).

As wind energy account for a small portion of the global electricity mix, the possibility of deriving all the benefits associated with wind energy is reliant on the degree at which it is feasible to change from other sources of energy (especially nuclear energy and fossil fuels) to wind energy in the electricity sector. For instance, in 2019, about 16.9 petawatt-hours or 63% of the aggregate electric power was produced from sources of fossil fuels, while 2.8 petawatt-hours or 10% of the aggregate electric power was produced from nuclear energy in the globe. Only 1.4 petawatt-hours or 5% of the aggregate electric power was produced from wind energy (British Petroleum, 2020 ).

However, it is difficult to find papers that have investigated the feasibility of replacing wind energy with fossil fuels or nuclear energy within the electricity sector. Many papers have concentrated on the inter-fuel substitution possibility between specific fossil fuels with specific renewable energy sources. Solarin and Bello ( 2019 ) have shown that it is possible to substitute coal, gas and oil with biomass in Brazil. Hossain and Serletis ( 2020 ) provided evidence for the feasibility of replacing biofuel for natural gas and biofuel for oil in the transportation industry of the USA. Tan and Lin ( 2020 ) provided evidence for substitution between coal and electricity, between electricity and oil, and between electricity and gas in China’s energy intensive industries. There are even studies that have concentrated on the feasibility of substituting electricity generation from one source of nonrenewable energy with another source of nonrenewable energy. For instance, Mugabe et al. ( 2020 ) illustrated that it is possible to substitute coal with natural gas in the USA.

The empirical findings generated from these studies might not necessarily be applicable for electricity generation. Moreover, policy options for primary energy consumption or generation might be different to those available for electricity generation. Hence, few studies have also concentrated on inter-fuel substitution for electricity generation. Lin and Ankrah ( 2019a , b ) illustrated that it is possible to shift from nonrenewable power generation system to renewable power generation system in Ghana and Nigeria, respectively. Kim ( 2019 ) disclosed that it is not possible to substitute nuclear power with renewable energy sources in Korea. Bello et al. ( 2020 ) suggested that it is possible to substitute coal and gas with hydroelectricity in the course of generating electric power in a south-east Asian country, Malaysia.

We aim to contribute to the existing body of work by investigating the feasibility of replacing the fossil fuels—natural gas and coal, as well as nuclear energy for wind power in the process of producing electric power in Germany. We have chosen Germany because of the following reasons. Firstly, Germany is not only among the biggest economies in the world, but also has the largest economy in Europe (World Bank, 2020 ). Secondly, being responsible for 16% of the aggregate energy consumption in 2019, the country has the biggest energy sector in the continent (British Petroleum, 2020 ). Thirdly, by producing carbon dioxide of 0.7 billion tonnes in 2019, the nation has the largest carbon dioxide in Europe and accounts for 17% of the aggregate carbon dioxide produced in the continent (British Petroleum, 2020). Fourthly, similar to the scenario in numerous economies, fossil fuels account for the bulk of electric power in Germany. About 0.3 petawatt-hours or 44% of the aggregate electric power was produced from fossil fuels sources. The total electricity generated through the renewable energy sources was 244 terawatt-hours, which is under 40% of the total. Only 0.1 petawatt-hours or 21% of the aggregate electricity was produced from wind energy (British Petroleum, 2020 ). Hence, this has made the power sector to be a key source of the country’s emissions. Production of heat and electricity led to CO2 emissions of 303 million tonnes or 42% of the aggregate fuel combustion induced CO2 emissions in Germany in 2017 (International Energy Association, 2020 ).

Fifthly, the government in Germany has introduced several policies and initiatives aimed at improving the popularity of wind energy. Some of these initiatives and policies include Offshore Grid Development Plan of 2005, Electricity Grid Development Plan of 2005, Energy Act passed in 2011 and Renewable Energy Act of 2017. Sixthly, the use of nuclear power to generate electricity has decreased substantially over the years. For instance, nuclear energy accounted for 133 terawatt-hours of electricity generated or 28% of the total electricity generated in 2010. However, by 2015, nuclear energy accounted for 86.8 terawatt-hours of electricity generated or 16% of the total electricity generated (which still made Germany, the seventh-biggest generator of nuclear energy in the globe). The German government approved the amendment of the Nuclear Energy Act of 2002, designed at decreasing reliance on nuclear energy in the country (World Wind Energy Association, 2018 ). Aftermath of the Fukushima disaster in Japan in March 2011, the authorities in Germany choose to shut down eight reactors that were in existent before 1980 due to public complaints and to shut down the remaining nine nuclear reactors in Germany before 2022 (Energy Information Administration, 2016 ).

The remaining parts of the paper are arranged in the following form. Section 2 describes the methodology, as well as the datasets that have been employed in this study. Section 3 presents the empirical findings and discussion resulting from the findings, while Sect. 4 contains the conclusion and policy implications of the paper.

Methodology

We begin by specifying the following production function:

where output ( Y ) depends on Energy ( E ) , Labour ( L ) and physical capital stock ( K ) . Energy (E) is supposed to be homothetic and weakly separable in its various components. For Germany, the main energy types that we have considered in this research are Coal ( C ), Gas ( G ), Wind ( W ) and Nuclear energy ( N ). Thus, segregating energy into its sub-components, Eq. ( 1 ) is re-written as:

We then transform Eq. ( 2 ) into a double differentiable transcendental logarithmic or trans-log production specification as follows:

Equation ( 1 ) is the general form of a second-order Taylor Series representation where Y is the output and the X s is the various units of input combinations (i.e. K, L, C, G, W, and N ) with subscripts i and j representing such combinations. Subscript t denotes period, the α s is the parameter estimates while ln shows that the variables are in their natural logarithm forms.

To avoid overparameterization, we have reduced the number of estimable parameters by including just the trans-log components of the energy elements as these are the focus of this study. Thus, the specific trans-log production function is stated as follows:

The parameter estimates of specification in ( 4 ) are used to derive the estimates of the output of elasticities of each of the energy sources. The output elasticity estimates are subsequently employed to produce the estimates of substitution coefficients between the energy inputs.

The output elasticity of an input i is computed as:

Thus, for the respective energy inputs ( C ) , ( G ) , ( W ) and ( N ) , the output elasticity is obtained as:

where η Ct , η Gt , η Wt , and η Nt specify elasticities of Coal, Gas, Wind, and Nuclear energy outputs, respectively. Given the estimates of the output elasticities of the energy inputs, the estimates of the substitution elasticities between the energy inputs are given as follows: σ ij = 1 + 2 α ij - α ii ( η j / η i ) - α jj ( η i / η j ) . η i + η j - 1 - 1 ( i ≠ j ; = c , g , w , n ) 10

The elasticity estimates are symmetry, i.e. ( σ ij = σ ji ) . The substitution elasticity between the respective energy pairs is therefore calculated as:

In Eqs. ( 11 – 16 ), positive estimate values imply that the energy pairs are substitutes while negative values connote complementary relationships between the energy pairs.

The dataset entails annual time series data on production, stock of physical capital, labour, coal, gas, wind energy and nuclear energy for Germany spanning the period 1986 to 2018. We have not included oil in the analysis as the country generates a negligible amount of electricity from it. Real GDP is used as proxy for output, while data for physical capital stock are represented by the Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF). To address inflationary trend, data on both the real GDP and the GFCF have been obtained at constant 2010US$ from the world development indicators of the World Bank ( 2020 ). Labour, obtained from the data and analysis section of the Conference Board ( 2020 ), is computed as persons employed (in thousands per persons). Data on the energy series, in million tonnes of oil equivalent (MTOE), were sourced from the Statistical Review of World Energy, which is being printed by British Petroleum (BP) ( 2020 ).

Ridge regression procedure

Extreme multicollinearity can cause serious problem in model estimation. This is especially the case when the model includes squared exponential explanatory terms like the trans-log model in Eq. ( 4 ). A severe case of multicollinearity usually exaggerates the standard errors of the parameter estimates and reduces the t-statistics. This does not only lead to insignificant probability values and grossly inaccurate parameter estimates but also ultimately results into loss of overall projecting ability of the model. In such case, the use of the conventional ordinary least square procedure becomes not only inconsistent but also misleading. To ascertain the propriety or otherwise of the OLS procedure, we commence the estimation procedure by first conducting a test for multicollinearity through the examination of the variance inflation factors of the regressors and the condition number of the Eigenvalues of correlation of the variables. The outcomes of the multicollinearity test, displayed in Table ​ Table1, 1 , shows that not only is the variance inflation factors for each of the regressors significantly exceed 10 but also the condition number of the Eigenvalues of correlation of some series exceeds 100 thereby establishing the existence of an extreme multicollinearity problem and rendering the application of the OLS technique unsuitable in this circumstance.

Least squares multicollinearity test result

Multicollinearity is severe as the variance inflation factors exceeds 10 and some condition figures of the Eigenvalues of correlations of some series exceed 100

To circumvent these challenges, Hoerl ( 1962 ) developed a unique regression procedure called the ridge regression procedure. The ridge regression approach involves the modification of the OLS parameter estimate by introducing a penalty parameter knows as a biasing constant ( c ). Therefore, the original matrix for the OLS coefficient estimate α ols = ( x ′ x ) - 1 x ′ y is modified into a ridge expression as α ridge = ( x ′ x + c I ) - 1 x ′ y where c is the penalty term whose values ranges from 0 to 1 and I is an identity matrix. The penalty parameter that is equal to zero corresponds to the OLS estimates.

Hoerl and Kennard ( 1970 ) suggested the usage of the ridge trace as a methodical means of finding the optimum value of c . The ridge trace plots the ridge regression coefficients as a function of c, and the value of c, for which the regression coefficients stabilise, is selected as the optimum. A ridge parameter of 0.184 has been selected as the optimum value of c based on the ridge trace plot shown in Fig.  1 as the parameter estimates seem to stabilise around this value.

Ridge trace plot

Furthermore, Table ​ Table2 2 is also used to show the effect of the ridge regression method on the variance inflation factors. As can be seen, changing the penalty parameters decreases the variance inflation factors. The zero value of the penalty parameter corresponds to the variance inflation factors for the OLS estimates which are very large, but steady increase in the penalty parameter continues to decrease the variance inflation factors until the value of 0.184 where the variance inflation factors for all variables have come under 10 and multicollinearity successfully addressed.

Effect of penalty parameter ( c ) on the variance inflation factor

The first row with a c value of 0 corresponds to the VIFs of the OLS procedure. The last row with a c value of 0.426 is the VIF of the ridge regression procedure which neutralised the severe multicollinearity problem. Source: Authors’ computations

Results and discussion

We begin the discussion of the results by presenting the results of the parameter estimates of the ridge regression procedure in Table ​ Table3. 3 . The table shows the figures of the variance inflation factor for each of the parameter, and as can be observed, these figures are less than 10, in so doing, supporting the fact that the issue of multicollinearity has been successfully resolved. In addition to this, the f -ratio is 1% significant with a 97.1% R -square signifying a robust goodness of fit and explanatory power of the parameters in the regression.

Ridge regression parameter estimates

Source: Authors’ computations

A implies 1% level of significance, C implies 10% level of significance, Figures in parenthesis are probability values.

From the parameter estimates of the ridge regression depicted in Table ​ Table3, 3 , the output elasticities of each of the energy inputs are obtained using Eqs. ( 6 ), ( 7 ), ( 8 ) and ( 9 ), respectively, for coal, gas, wind, and nuclear energy and the empirical findings are depicted in Table ​ Table4. 4 . The result shows that the average output elasticities for both gas and wind energy are positive, while the corresponding figures for both coal and nuclear are negative. This outcome is not totally surprising as wind energy is considered a cleaner energy with an increasing share in the energy profile of Germany over the recent years. Similarly, gas is considered less harmful compared to other fossil fuel like coal which is perhaps most environmentally detrimental to the environment after oil, while nuclear, on the other hand, has been experiencing a downward trend in the energy profile of Germany. The estimates of the output elasticities are employed to compute the elasticities of substitution estimates between the energy pairs. These are given in Table ​ Table5 5 with positive estimate values between all energy inputs averaging unity. This implies that all energy pairs considered in this study for Germany are substitutes. With specific reference to wind, the highest substitutability estimate is nuclear energy, followed by gas and then coal.

Output elasticity estimates

Substitution elasticity estimates

The foregoing results suggest that wind energy has positive impact on economic growth, as well as being able to substitute nuclear energy, coal and natural gas in Germany. The results can be attributed to several reasons. First, wind power is cost-effective in many regions. Wind deployment is associated with integrated costs including balancing costs (arising from uncertainty that is connected to the adoption of wind power); grid costs (which are associated with the adaptation of the grid to wind energy generation), and profile costs (which are associated with the need for backup capacity, particularly during peak-load periods). The integrated costs are collectively less than the costs that would have been incurred if most of the alternative sources of electricity were being utilised. Its appeal has risen over the years because of its substantial cost reduction and its non-susceptibility to oil price volatility (Ortega-Izquierdo & del Río, 2020 ).

Another rationale for the above the results is the smaller space required by wind technology and the flexibility in its use. Wind energy stations usually require less space than conventional power stations. Therefore, the freed space and land resulting from the shift to wind energy can be employed for other productive projects. Wind turbines can be mounted in locations that are remote in nature. Besides, wind farms capacity is changeable in line with the energy and electricity needs. It is possible to build wind turbines on existing ranches or farms. This significantly aids the productive activities in rural areas. It is possible for ranchers and farmers to continue to work on their land because the wind turbines occupy only a portion of the land. For their use of the leased land, the owners of wind power plant regularly pay rents to the ranchers or farmers, offering landowners with extra income.

The foregoing results can also be justified on the basis that increase in investment has accompanied the deployment of wind energy in Germany. The deployment of wind energy technologies requires both public and private investments. In Germany, public investment on wind energy technologies has increased over the years. For instance, the government support for technology increased nine-fold from 740 million euro in 2009 to 6520 million euro in 2016 (Ortega-Izquierdo & del Río, 2020 ). Investment in new technology increases productivity and the productive capacity of the economy, which assists to shift the long-run aggregate supply to the right. An increase in long-run aggregate supply is essential for long-term economic growth. Investment leads to a substantial rise in productivity, as well as an increase in the productive capacity of the country.

Another justification for the foregoing empirical findings is that wind is a domestic source of energy. Hence, substituting fossil fuels with wind energy is likely to reduce the dependence of the country on imported fuels, which grain the resources. The saved resources, as a result of the deployment of wind energy, can be used to fund other productive activities such as research and development. Germany is regarded as the biggest importer of natural gas in the globe. The largest gas imports come from the Netherlands, Norway and Russia via the Nord Stream. Imports account for about 90% of total natural gas supply (Energy Information Administration, 2016 ).

In this paper, we have used the trans-log production approach to investigate the inter-fuel substitution elasticity between wind energy, nuclear energy and fossil fuels for the period 1986–2018 in the electricity sector of Germany. Due to the existence of multicollinearity among the regressors, the ridge regression approach has been used in the estimation process. The results reveal that wind and natural gas have positive output elasticity estimates, while the estimates for nuclear and coal are negative. We also found that all the inputs pairs have positive substitution elasticity estimates between them. With respect to wind energy, the highest substitutability estimate occurred with nuclear power which is followed by natural gas and then coal.

One of the policy implications of wind energy having positive output elasticity is that attempts of the authorities to increase wind energy will positively contribute to the economy through expansion in the country’s gross domestic product. This also implies that negative shocks to wind energy consumption will negatively affect economic growth. Although natural gas also has a positive impact on economic growth, expansion of natural gas will lead to more emission in the economy due to its nature as a carbon emitting fossil fuel.

The implication of the results that provides evidence for substitutability among the inputs is that it is possible to substitute coal, natural gas and nuclear energy for wind energy in the electricity sector. On the one hand, wind energy can be used to substitute coal and natural gas, which cause emission. One the other hand, as the government in Germany continues to wind down the use of nuclear reactors, nuclear energy can be replaced with renewable energy sources, especially wind energy as against using substituting nuclear energy with fossil fuels. This possibility is underscored by the fact that only about 24% of the 60,822 megawatts of the installed wind turbine capacity was utilised in 2019 (British Petroleum, 2020 ). Therefore, the country has the capacity to increase wind energy for electricity generation.

Hence, it is recommended that several policies should be introduced to encourage the usage of wind energy in the economy. One of such policies is the introduction of tax credit for wind energy technology. Such initiative is likely to decrease net project costs to consumers, encourage the adoption of wind energy technologies and boost market acceptance of clean energy projects. Another policy option that will yield the same result is the reduction in property taxes for wind power facilities. The effort to enhance grid connection guidelines, an effective financial system, the commitment on the part of the government to allocate fund for research and development (R&D), in addition to synergy between the wind industry, science sector and the state are other initiatives necessary for the success of the wind industry. There is also a need for a mix of public policies that lead to an enabling atmosphere for the success of the wind industry.

The government in Germany has been initiating policies in this direction. For instance, the authorities in Germany have introduced remuneration scheme and the Feed-In-Tariff (FiT), which has led to greater longevity, transparency, and certainty for investors in the wind energy market. Besides, there has been an increase in the financing and deployment of wind energy technologies and erecting of wind turbines across the country (World Wind Energy Association, 2018 ). Therefore, the government should continue on the path of introducing policies aimed at encouraging wind energy development in the country.

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ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

Wind energy.

Scientists and engineers are using energy from the wind to generate electricity. Wind energy, or wind power, is created using a wind turbine.

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As renewable energy technology continues to advance and grow in popularity, wind farms like this one have become an increasingly common sight along hills, fields, or even offshore in the ocean.

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Anything that moves has kinetic energy , and scientists and engineers are using the wind’s kinetic energy to generate electricity. Wind energy , or wind power , is created using a wind turbine , a device that channels the power of the wind to generate electricity.

The wind blows the blades of the turbine , which are attached to a rotor. The rotor then spins a generator to create electricity. There are two types of wind turbines : the horizontal - axis wind turbines (HAWTs) and vertical - axis wind turbines (VAWTs). HAWTs are the most common type of wind turbine . They usually have two or three long, thin blades that look like an airplane propeller. The blades are positioned so that they face directly into the wind. VAWTs have shorter, wider curved blades that resemble the beaters used in an electric mixer.

Small, individual wind turbines can produce 100 kilowatts of power, enough to power a home. Small wind turbines are also used for places like water pumping stations. Slightly larger wind turbines sit on towers that are as tall as 80 meters (260 feet) and have rotor blades that extend approximately 40 meters (130 feet) long. These turbines can generate 1.8 megawatts of power. Even larger wind turbines can be found perched on towers that stand 240 meters (787 feet) tall have rotor blades more than 162 meters (531 feet) long. These large turbines can generate anywhere from 4.8 to 9.5 megawatts of power.

Once the electricity is generated, it can be used, connected to the electrical grid, or stored for future use. The United States Department of Energy is working with the National Laboratories to develop and improve technologies, such as batteries and pumped-storage hydropower so that they can be used to store excess wind energy. Companies like General Electric install batteries along with their wind turbines so that as the electricity is generated from wind energy, it can be stored right away.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are 57,000 wind turbines in the United States, both on land and offshore. Wind turbines can be standalone structures, or they can be clustered together in what is known as a wind farm . While one turbine can generate enough electricity to support the energy needs of a single home, a wind farm can generate far more electricity, enough to power thousands of homes. Wind farms are usually located on top of a mountain or in an otherwise windy place in order to take advantage of natural winds.

The largest offshore wind farm in the world is called the Walney Extension. This wind farm is located in the Irish Sea approximately 19 kilometers (11 miles) west of the northwest coast of England. The Walney Extension covers a massive area of 149 square kilometers (56 square miles), which makes the wind farm bigger than the city of San Francisco, California, or the island of Manhattan in New York. The grid of 87 wind turbines stands 195 meters (640 feet) tall, making these offshore wind turbines some of the largest wind turbines in the world. The Walney Extension has the potential to generate 659 megawatts of power, which is enough to supply 600,000 homes in the United Kingdom with electricity.

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Our societies must reconsider current industrial practices and find carbon-neutral alternatives to avoid the detrimental environmental effects that come with the release of greenhouse gases from fossil-energy carriers. Using renewable sources, such as solar and wind, allows us to circumvent the burning of fossil energy carriers to produce electrical energy. However, this leads to a spatial-temporal discrepancy between production and demand, necessitating the ability to store vast amounts of electrical energy. Physical storage of electrical energy, such as hydropower and underground pressure storage, as well as the conversion of electrical energy into chemical energy, such as with batteries, can offer vast storage capacities. Another route of storing electrical energy at a massive scale is its conversion into chemical-energy carriers by combining or integrating electrochemistry with biology. Here, we will give an overview of the potential of these biological-storage technologies. Based on the order in which they combine or integrate biological and electrochemical steps, we will discuss the current state of research on these technologies in three distinct sections: (1) electrochemistry followed by biology; (2) biology followed by electrochemistry; and (3) integrated electrochemistry and biology. We will discuss research needs and opportunities in an outlook section at the end.

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New Jersey to fund research on offshore wind impacts on whales

The new funding will help researchers evaluate the impact of offshore wind activities on whales, birds and the marine ecosystem..

New funding in N.J. will be used to research offshore wind turbines, like these in Copenhagen, Denmark, and whether marine mammals are impacted by activities associated with turbine construction projects. (Courtesy of Willett Kempton)

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Protect Our Coast New Jersey and Defend Brigantine Beach and Downbeach filed an appeal to the approval in state court.

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“Once the turbines are constructed and operating, these studies have little value because there’s nothing you can do to mitigate the problems you find,” Stern said. “To do this now after you make the decision on the project just seems to us to make little sense at all.”

However, environmental advocacy groups such as the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters say climate change itself is a bigger threat to wildlife. The organization’s executive director, Ed Potosnak, said the new funding will help ongoing research that aims to better understand marine ecosystem behaviors.

“[For example], the migratory patterns of marine mammals, it is important to know when to install the footings and the wind turbines themselves, to ensure we’re doing that in the offseason when the species are not in the area,” he said. “So having funding in those areas is really beneficial.”

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Retraction Note: Mitigating the economic impact of COVID-19 on wind energy: assessing the role of green finance policies and the levelized cost of energy

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• Raza Ali Tunio 3 &
• Ghansham Das 4  

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The Publisher has retracted this article in agreement with the Editor-in-Chief. An investigation by the publisher found a number of articles, including this one, with a number of concerns, including but not limited to compromised peer review process, inappropriate or irrelevant references, containing nonstandard phrases or not being in scope of the journal. Based on the investigation’s findings the publisher, in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief therefore no longer has confidence in the results and conclusions of this article.

Raza Ali Tunio agrees with the retraction. Riaz Hussain Jamali, Amanullah Bughio, Ghansham Das, and Rizwan Jamali have not responded to correspondence from the Publisher.

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Jamali, R.H., Bughio, A., Tunio, R.A. et al. Retraction Note: Mitigating the economic impact of COVID-19 on wind energy: assessing the role of green finance policies and the levelized cost of energy. Environ Sci Pollut Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-024-33081-8

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Tackling grand challenges in wind energy through a socio-technical perspective

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Wind power has an important role to play in tackling climate change. Key challenges in wind energy science and innovation must be overcome to increase the penetration and capability of this technology. However, the success of these efforts heavily depends on how society engages with the development of wind power infrastructure. Consequently, grand challenges exist in both technical and social domains, yet little research has made substantial efforts in connecting them. Here we review the social science and humanities literature on wind energy to illustrate the social dimensions of previously identified technical challenges. We suggest that a socio-technical lens enables an interdisciplinary approach to overcome the prevalent tendency of silo thinking in wind energy research and use it to explore socio-technical grand challenges related to the design, planning, development, operational and end-of-life phases of wind energy. Finally, we provide an outlook for research, practice and innovation, including an interdisciplinary and socio-technical research agenda for wind energy science, renewable energy developments and science policy in general.

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Tribes oppose federal offshore wind projects in Oregon and California

Members of the Yurok Tribe at an offshore wind summit the Tribe hosted in early February 2024. The Tribe recently came out opposed to federal offshore wind projects.

Courtesy of Yurok Tribe

A growing number of tribes in Oregon and California are coming out in opposition to federal offshore wind projects. Some tribes don’t believe there’s been enough research into the impacts on the environment.

At least five tribes along the West Coast have announced their opposition to proposed offshore wind development. Five areas off the California coast were auctioned off in late 2022 to build floating wind turbines. And the federal government is considering sales off the Southern Oregon coast.

Derek Bowman, a council member with the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria south of Eureka, California, said the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, hasn’t involved the tribes enough in the process.

“We have a huge amount of traditional ecological knowledge that could assist in a lot of assessments that they’re doing,” Bowman said. “And we’re not really included in it. It feels like we’re just a checkbox that they have to check in order to say, ‘Hey, we talked to the tribes, we’re good to go.’ And we’re not alright with that.”

Related: Federal government finalizes floating offshore wind areas off the Oregon Coast

The Northern Chumash Tribe, which people live in Southern California, expressed concerns about the proposed sale of two offshore wind areas near Morro Bay in 2022 before they were auctioned off. Their opposition wasn’t about offshore wind in general, but because of the sites overlapping with a nearby  proposed National Marine Sanctuary .

This year, a number of other tribes came out in formal opposition to the projects. The first was the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians in mid-February.

“BOEM’s press release states that it has ‘engaged’ with the Tribe, but that engagement has amounted to listening to the Tribe’s concerns and ignoring them and providing promises that they may be dealt with at some later stage of the process,” said Tribal Council Chair Brad Kneaper in a statement.

More tribes quickly joined in opposition, including the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria and California’s largest tribe, the Yurok. All three announced their opposition in early March.

Bowman said that historically, logging and gold mining industries took natural resources and gave little back to tribal communities.

“It’s just hard for us to accept that what’s best for everyone actually means it’s good for us too,” he said. “Because we always suffer when the government comes in to say, ‘This is what’s best for everybody and we need to do it in your area to help people in another area.’ It never works out for us.”

Related: Lacking information, Oregon residents guess at future of offshore wind

Beyond a lack of engagement, Bowman says there hasn’t been enough research into the environmental effects, both on the ocean and on land. Those include possible effects of turbines on fishing and marine animal activities, as well as transmission lines on land that could harm endangered species in the region.

“More importantly, when it comes to overland transmission lines, it’s the potential for fires. They cause fires all over California,” Bowman said. “And now running right through our ancestral territory, there are going to be these very large transmission lines overland.”

In a statement, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it agrees that tribes must have a seat at the table.

“We have taken coordinated actions to incorporate Indigenous Knowledge and Tribal input into our decision making process and we are working to help Tribes expand capacity to engage in environmental reviews, work with industry, and develop partnerships,” said BOEM in a statement.

Development of offshore wind farms on the California coast are underway, but turbines won’t be deployed for at least four years. The agency is currently developing its environmental assessment for two offshore wind areas on the Southern Oregon coast.

Related: Oregon agencies support floating offshore wind project, but ask for more federal engagement

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