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Abstract A recent article in this journal claimed to assess the socio-technical potential for onshore wind energy in Europe. We find the article to be severely flawed and raise concerns in five general areas. Firstly, the term socio-technical is not precisely defined, and is used by the authors to refer to a potential that others term as merely technical. Secondly, the study fails to account for over a decade of research in wind energy resource assessments. Thirdly, there are multiple issues with the use of input data and, because the study is opaque about many details, the effect of these errors cannot be reproduced. Fourthly, the method assumes a very high wind turbine capacity density of 10.73 MW/km2 across 40% of the land area in Europe with a generic 30% capacity factor. Fifthly, the authors find an implausibly high onshore wind potential, with 120% more capacity and 70% more generation than the highest results given elsewhere in the literature. Overall, we conclude that new research at higher spatial resolutions can make a valuable contribution to wind resource potential assessments. However, due to the missing literature review, the lack of transparency and the overly simplistic methodology, Enevoldsen et al. (2019) potentially mislead fellow scientists, policy makers and the general public.

Applied Energy, 258 ISSN:0306-2619 ISSN:1872-9118

Abstract The JET 2019–2020 scientific and technological programme exploited the results of years of concerted scientific and engineering work, including the ITER-like wall (ILW: Be wall and W divertor) installed in 2010, improved diagnostic capabilities now fully available, a major neutral beam injection upgrade providing record power in 2019–2020, and tested the technical and procedural preparation for safe operation with tritium. Research along three complementary axes yielded a wealth of new results. Firstly, the JET plasma programme delivered scenarios suitable for high fusion power and alpha particle (α) physics in the coming D–T campaign (DTE2), with record sustained neutron rates, as well as plasmas for clarifying the impact of isotope mass on plasma core, edge and plasma-wall interactions, and for ITER pre-fusion power operation. The efficacy of the newly installed shattered pellet injector for mitigating disruption forces and runaway electrons was demonstrated. Secondly, research on the consequences of long-term exposure to JET-ILW plasma was completed, with emphasis on wall damage and fuel retention, and with analyses of wall materials and dust particles that will help validate assumptions and codes for design and operation of ITER and DEMO. Thirdly, the nuclear technology programme aiming to deliver maximum technological return from operations in D, T and D–T benefited from the highest D–D neutron yield in years, securing results for validating radiation transport and activation codes, and nuclear data for ITER.

This paper presents the first multi-model ensemble of 10-year, “convection-permitting” kilometer- scale regional climate model (RCM) scenario simulations downscaled from selected CMIP5 GCM projections for historical and end of century time slices. The technique is to first downscale the CMIP5 GCM projections to an intermediate 12–15 km resolution grid using RCMs, and then use these fields to downscale further to the kilometer scale. The aim of the paper is to provide an overview of the representation of the precipitation characteristics and their projected changes over the greater Alpine domain within a Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment Flagship Pilot Study and the European Climate Prediction system project, tasked with investigating convective processes at the kilometer scale. An ensemble of 12 simulations performed by different research groups around Europe is analyzed. The simulations are evaluated through comparison with high resolution observations while the complementary ensemble of 12 km resolution driving models is used as a benchmark to evaluate the added value of the convection-permitting ensemble. The results show that the kilometer-scale ensemble is able to improve the representation of fine scale details of mean daily, wet-day/hour frequency, wet- day/hour intensity and heavy precipitation on a seasonal scale, reducing uncertainty over some regions. It also improves the representation of the summer diurnal cycle, showing more realistic onset and peak of convection. The kilometer-scale ensemble refines and enhances the projected patterns of change from the coarser resolution simulations and even modifies the sign of the precipitation intensity change and heavy precipitation over some regions. The convection permitting simulations also show larger changes for all indices over the diurnal cycle, also suggesting a change in the duration of convection over some regions. A larger positive change of frequency of heavy to severe precipitation is found. The results are encouraging towards the use of convection-permitting model ensembles to produce robust assessments of the local impacts of future climate change.