Assessment of offshore wind speed and power potential over the Mediterranean and the Black Seas under future climate changes

Renewable energy resources including wind power are being increasingly harnessed to provide electricity generation potential with negligible emissions of carbon dioxide. However, the wind energy resource is susceptible to climate change that might benefit or negatively impact wind energy developments depending on the region under consideration. In this study, the wind speed as well as the resulting wind power potential over the maritime areas of the Mediterranean Sea and a large part of the Black Sea is analyzed by exploring an ensemble of six regional climate model simulations of the current and two future periods produced in the frame of the ENSEMBLES project. The ensemble is also used to illustrate the uncertainties in future climate change simulations related to boundary conditions, and to the regional model selection. Results show a decrease in mean wind speed and wind power potential over the central Mediterranean Sea with the exceptions of an increase over the Aegean, Alboran Seas and Gulf of Lion, that also presents an important seasonality. Moreover, significant differences between the ensemble simulations are affected by the regional model selection and even more by the global model used to provide the boundary conditions.