Here’s Another wacky thing caused by climate change: less wind to create clean electricity
There are many woes associated with climate change: searing temperatures, devastating droughts, fearsome flooding and more.
And now here’s another — and one which severely undercuts efforts to have renewables replace fossil fuels in the generation of power.
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It is that climate change also appears to be lessening the amount of wind that drives the turbines that have sprung up across the nation and around the world.
An example comes from Illinois, where the amount of energy generated from the turbines that have sprung up across the state took a 6% dip in 2023 over the previous year. This, and some other factors, led to a 43% increase in the amount of power generated by natural gas, according to government figures.
The blame has been placed on the pressure system in Canada that caused huge wildfires there whose smoke inundated many areas in the Midwest and Northeast.
For much of the early months of summer, winds blew from east to west, which is opposite of the typical pattern of west to east, state climatatologist Trent Ford told Inside Climate News.
“Those winds also brought wildfire smoke to us on a number of occasions,” he added, also saying that, “wind speeds were weaker than normal because of that pattern.”
For instance, the average wind speed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport from June to August 2023 was 8 miles per hour, the lowest since 2009, according to figures Ford provided. The data show “much lower average wind speeds than most of the past 20 years,” he said.
That factor is vital in power generation. “Small changes in wind speed can have pretty consequential impacts on wind power,” Jessica Conroy, an associate professor of earth science and environmental change at the University of Illinois, told the outlet, adding that, “Using future model wind projections is a real necessity.”
People used to pray for rain (or for it to stop); maybe now they’ll be praying for wind.
