Spatiotemporal assessment of offshore wind energy resources in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau greater Bay area considering climate change impacts

Offshore wind energy is a key measure for energy system decarbonization. Offshore wind resource maps under climate change can provide crucial information for future offshore wind farm development. By integrating numerical weather prediction model simulations, global climate model simulations, and long-term observations, this study spatiotemporally assesses the offshore wind resources in the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macau Greater Bay Area under climate change. The spatial distributions of wind speed, wind power density, and capacity factor at heights of 80, 100, 150, and 200 m are evaluated at 1-km resolution, and the climate change impacts on these wind resource parameters for 80 years (2021–2100) in the future emission scenarios are investigated. It is found that the wind speed and capacity factor may change slightly (generally up to ±2% and ±4%, respectively) in most parts of the study domain under future climate. Furthermore, validation against observations suggests that the wind resource maps generated in this study can satisfactorily reproduce the wind regime, with percent biases of less than 5% for wind speed and 10% for wind power density. The research outcomes are expected to facilitate the site selection and economic analysis of future offshore wind farm projects in this region.