Impact of climate change on wind energy projections in Turkey under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emission trajectories

A successful transition towards renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydropower is indispensable for the efforts to combat climate change. However, these sources are also quite susceptible to changes in climatic conditions and that is why it is critical to understand how future climate change will affect the energy generation from these sources. To that aim, this thesis investigates how the wind energy potential will change for Turkey in the future under different climate change trajectories. For this, the MPI-ESM-MR global climate model was downscaled with RegCM4.4 and model results for 10 m. wind speed data were obtained for Turkey with 10x10km grid resolution, from which the Wind Power Density (WPD) is calculated for the 2021-2050 period under RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. 30-year WPD averages are calculated for each month, season, and year. The results suggest that while the projected annual averages do not seem to change significantly, average decreases in WPD under both RCP4.5 and 8.5 scenarios are expected, especially during the winter months. Furthermore, some regional disparities are also observed, especially for the Marmara and Aegean regions (with around 75% of the currently installed capacity), where wind energy potential is shown to increase in February, March, and April, and to decline in December and January. Following these results, the thesis concludes with policy recommendations on storage technologies to overcome potential fluctuations in electricity generation from wind and on enhancing R&D such as potential improvements on Wind Energy Potential Atlas (REPA).