Assessment of Climate RIsk for a large windfarm

The main aim was to provide an assessment of the physical risks that Climate Change for the a multi Tb cluster of windfarms and solar plant  poses to the assets and technologies in the project development area.

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In particular, we used our experience in developing climate change risk assessments for  wind, solar and hydrogen plants  to provide a comprehensive list of climate risk indices tailored to the different technologies . 

The proposal was divided into three actions :

1. Derivation of climate hazards data at high resolution
2. Elaboration of  risk narratives for each technology and target areas
3. Analysis and preparation of final CCRA report

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Our approach combined:

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• Downscaled global climate models’ data easily accessible through a web interface; this  facilitates the  access to high resolution time series for multiple essential climate variables from different climate modelling experiments (e.g. CMIP5 and CMIP6).

• Unique access to high resolution wind and solar resources information for and location, through our technological partner Vortex (www.vortexfdc.com)

• Consolidated expertise in translating climate hazards into risk indices for a range of  energy technologies, including wind, solar, hydrogen and storage.

• The ability to customise our climate risk solutions to a specific project, incorporating the customers’ inputs, and site and asset information, thanks to our extensive experience on real energy projects.

• The ability to sintetise and communicate the results  to a wide range of stakeholders, from experts and consultants to policy makers.

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The risk analysis included impacts on 

1. Revenue/Energy Production/the resource, i.e., changes in wind patterns. This is relevant for wind and solar plants
2. OPEX/the operations and management of the different assets within the project
3. CAPEX/the generation (or supporting) infrastructure, i.e., floods, storms that can damage the power plant.

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Climate hazards associated with each impact category will be aligned, where possible, with the EU taxonomy and TCFD requirements. Note that EU Taxonomy is used here as providing reference guidelines for disclosing risks in infrastructure and energy systems.

Risk metric  definitions will be based on recommended and standard practices. Input from the client can be employed to delimit the different levels of impact. 

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The final REPORT  covered the following topics:

1. Background information of the climate context for impact assessment based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports and other scientific literature
2. Summary of Climate Physical Risks for Wind, Solar, and Hydrogen technologies based on review of the literature and Climate Scale experience on previous projects
3. Climate Scale downscaled climate data and description of methodological approach
4. Development project Climate Change physical hazard analysis based on RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 climate projections
5. Development project Impact Assessment based on energy system risk metrics
6. Characterization of risk hotspots and exposure index for the development key location
7. Consideration of cascading consequences
8. Final recommendations

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