Abstract
Wind energy currently provides low-cost, carbon-free electricity, supporting the grid in many regions where it supplies more than a third of annual energy and occasionally supplies the majority of the real-time electricity demand.1 Many countries around the world, motivated by the technology’s benefits as well as national energy security motives, have set ambitious deployment targets for wind energy for the next decade and beyond (International Energy Agency 2023). Government support to achieve these ambitious targets forms a strong driver for increased wind energy deployment. However, achieving an energy system that depends on wind for half of global electricity will require deployment of wind generators around the world at an order of magnitude greater than current installed capacity.
This major transition requires wind plants to be deployed in more locations where to date they have not been developed and/or proven, such as deep-water offshore sites and low-wind-resource land-based sites. The targeted penetration levels should be planned with careful consideration of impacts on grid resilience, as well as the intersection of increased deployment with the environment (i.e., wildlife, waste, emissions) and society. Continuous growth in wind energy deployment requires sustained value creation, meaning a balanced spread of risk and profitability across the supply chain, while providing not only renewable energy at a cost point that is at parity with conventional sources of electricity production but also good-paying and secure jobs for the hundreds of thousands of people employed in this industry.
Superimposing these drivers and limiters for accelerated deployment with the need for sustainable value creation highlights the gaps in the current state of the science that need to be addressed to create a future in which all objectives can be satisfied. The Grand Challenges of wind energy (Veers et al. 2019, Veers et al. 2022) summarize the gaps in the scientific foundation. Specifically, the Grand Challenges of wind energy relate to our inadequate understanding of and inability to accurately model 1) the atmosphere, 2) the turbine, 3) the plant and grid, 4) the environmental impacts, and 5) social interactions. Progress in making wind energy a foundational energy source for the clean energy transition depends on making progress in all five of these Grand Challenge areas.
Prior publications have highlighted the Grand Challenges (National Renewable Energy Laboratory n.d.) and are continuing to define the issues within each area. The International Energy Agency (IEA)Wind Energy Systems Technology Collaboration Programme’s (TCP’s) Topical Experts Meeting (TEM) #109 was convened Feb. 28–March 1, 2023, in Boulder, Colorado, USA, to further explore these five individual Grand Challenges and their intersections.
One critical goal of the TEM #109 meeting was to examine the cross-disciplinary issues created by the intersections between the challenges. These intersections are known to some extent but do not always receive the attention needed because they stretch individual areas of expertise outside of traditional boundaries. This stretching and resultant lack of attention is most prevalent among the first three challenges, which are more technology focused, and the last two, which deal with external consequences. The TEM was organized to create space for dialogue to explore the crosscutting challenges and to document critical issues.
With five Grand Challenges, there are ten crosscutting combinations to be explored. A premeeting survey revealed substantial interest in eight areas (the lone exception being the intersection of social issues with the atmosphere). The organizers omitted one option—the crosscut between social and environmental issues—on the assumption that these groups would be represented by fewer participants than the others and the experts would be spread too thin to cover all the crosscuts. Feedback from the attendees confirmed high levels of interest in this intersection; perhaps counterintuitively, these groups rarely have a chance to interact. Participants concluded that a follow-on meeting devoted to social and environmental interactions would be useful. Table ES-2 summarizes the cross-cutting challenge areas and resulting critical issues.
Meeting participants also noted that although many different areas of wind energy expertise were represented at the TEM #109, few turbine manufacturer representatives attended. Including industry members is crucial to identifying the gaps in science and technology to mitigate the impacts of wind deployment while ensuring sustained value creation. Although 2023 was a difficult year for the industry, this workshop operated under the working assumption that the industry will weather the storm. The community recognizes the need for a profitable industry that serves the expanding wind energy market of the future.
All crosscutting groups observed three common issues. First, the dialogue revealed a lack of understanding of some of the basic concepts and terminology foundational to one group by the other. Education that crosses traditional boundaries will be needed to support clear communication and establish collaborative working relationships. Second, the need to aggregate, manage, and control access to massive data sets while protecting intellectual property was noted across all groups. Many issues might be resolved if the data that already exist could be brought to bear. The revolution in digitalization offers solutions to this combined opportunity and challenge but is yet to be fully engaged. Third, these discussions are highly enlightening and needed in more locations and in greater number if solutions are to be found in these overlapping areas. The documented findings in this report should open the door to future cross-disciplinary efforts that can progress from identifying critical issues to finding the solutions necessary for the substantial expansion of wind energy. Success could enable wind energy to supply 50% or more of the electricity demand in a future global energy system.