The global climate and environmental emergency demand global, swift and immediate action. The decarbonization of all greenhouse gas emitting sectors, from transport and electricity generation to the residential sector, must be prioritized. Electricity production is one of the critical points for this transition, much due to the amount of GHG (Greenhouse Gases) emitted by several conventional fossil fuel power plants and the expected growth of renewable energy technologies that can significantly shift the existing electricity production mix. Nevertheless, technological challenges will mark this energy transition. While some technologies are already market-ready, competitive with fossil fuel powerplants, others still need to develop and are expected to have significant price reductions. This way, it will still be possible to combine the security of energy supply, environmental protection and an attractive economic performance for investors and consumers through significant integration of renewable energy. As part of the regionalization activities of Project Drawdown in Europe, this work main objective is to obtain, through analysis and interpretation of various studies and articles, the future range of potential of wind energy technologies in a European and European Union context between the years 2020 and 2050, modelling the decrease of CO2e emissions and financial needs of their increased adoption in the electricity generation mix. The second objective is to identify and characterize the three main wind technologies with technical and economic parameters - Onshore, Offshore and Small. The last objective is to identify and develop an analysis of each wind technology's future potential electricity generation using a vast set of energy scenarios with different assumptions, models, and timeframes. Regarding the total values collected for the European Union, electricity generation for 2050 is expected to range between 1 116 – 5 256 TWh/y, with 812 - 2 591 TWh/y corresponding to Onshore generation, 304 - 2 556 TWh/y to Offshore generation and 0.6 - 109 TWh/y to generation through Small Wind systems. In total, wind power systems make up between 6.7 - 23.3 % of the European Union's energy mix. Over the next 30 years, these technologies are expected to reduce between 6.71 – 32.21 Gt CO2e with increased lifetime operating costs of around 310 – 2 700 billion €.
Full publication here.