Renewable energy resources, which depend on climate, may be susceptible to future climate change. Here we use climate and integrated assessment models to estimate this effect on key renewables. Future potential and costs are quantified across two warming scenarios for eight technologies: utility-scale and rooftop photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, onshore and offshore wind energy, first-generation and lignocellulosic bioenergy, and hydropower. The generated cost–supply curves are then used to estimate energy system impacts. In a baseline warming scenario, the largest impact is increased availability of bioenergy, though this depends on the strength of CO₂ fertilization. Impacts on hydropower and wind energy are uncertain, with declines in some regions and increases in others, and impacts on solar power are minor. In a future mitigation scenario, these impacts are smaller, but the energy system response is similar to that in the baseline scenario given a larger reliance of the mitigation scenario on renewables.

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Correction to: Nature Climate Change https://doi-org.tudelft.idm.oclc.org/10.1038/s41558-020-00949-9, published online 11 January 2021. In the version of this Article originally published, the colours in the scale bars in Figs. 1c and 2, Extended Data Figs. 2c and 4, and Supplementary Figs. 2c and 4 were inadvertently flipped such that they were shown as being blue to red, from left to right, but should have been red to blue. The online versions of the Article have been corrected and the Supplementary Information file has been replaced. The tick marks and values have not changed.@en

Although our knowledge of climate change impacts on energy systems has increased substantially over the past few decades, there remains a lack of comprehensive overview of impacts across spatial scales. Here, we analyse results of 220 studies projecting climate impacts on energy systems globally and at the regional scale. Globally, a potential increase in cooling demand and decrease in heating demand can be anticipated, in contrast to slight decreases in hydropower and thermal energy capacity. Impacts at the regional scale are more mixed and relatively uncertain across regions, but strongest impacts are reported for South Asia and Latin America. Our assessment shows that climate impacts on energy systems at regional and global scales are uncertain due partly to the wide range of methods and non-harmonized datasets used. For a comprehensive assessment of climate impacts on energy, we propose a consistent multi-model assessment framework to support regional-to-global-scale energy planning.

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