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Increasing renewable sources in the energy mix is essential to mitigate climate change, not least in countries where the energy demand is likely to rise over the coming decades to reduce or even skip durations of time where fossils dominate. For Africa, solar photovoltaic (PV) and inland wind energy, combined with hydropower, provide significant and untapped potentials, whereas trends and robustness measures need further investigation. This study aims to gain insight into distributed trends in solar PV and wind energy potentials over Africa. This study employs relevant metrics, including relative change, model agreement, robustness, bias, and absolute levels for every available model combination and two climate scenarios, with energy planning purposes in mind. The study finds that regional climate models were the primary control of spatio-temporal patterns over their driving global climate model. Solar PV potentials show more coherence between models, a lower bias and general high potentials in most African regions than wind potentials. Favourable locations for inland wind energy include mainly the regions of greater Sahara and the Horn region. For wind and solar potentials combined, scattered locations within Sahara stand out as the most favourable across scenarios and periods. The analysis of minimum energy potentials shows stable conditions despite low potentials in certain regions. The results demonstrate a potential for solar and wind power in most of the African regions and highlight why solar and wind power or synergies of energy mix should be considered for local energy planning and storage solutions.

Rumor has it that all technologies needed to build energy islands are ready. Wind turbines are spinning in many large offshore parks, while combinations of sand and concrete have given birth to several entirely new islands. However, not all rumors are true. Not only has the Danish parliament mandated the largest ever infrastructure project in the history of our country. The first Danish artificial island built for energy production will also become the world’s largest renewable energy project. On top of the technical and logistical challenges associated with building something of an unprecedented scale and nature come new concerns. The energy islands are an extreme version of the power system we know today, and therefore represent a Mars mission for the energy system. More than once have large infrastructure projects been plagued by delays and significant additional costs. Often such problems have been rooted in overly optimistic planning, limited knowledge regarding the complexity and interdependencies involved, and not giving enough attention to the development phase relative to the construction phase. For many reasons, it is highly desirable for the energy island projects to perform well. Therefore, we have teamed up to map the key challenges and suggest R&D initiatives to address them. Importantly, these initiatives are not intended as an inserted step before construction. Given the urgency in green transition and ending the reliance on fossil fuels, research and construction must be conducted in parallel. A solid foundation for energy islands On the following pages we invite you to delve into the complexity of constructing and operating offshore hubs for renewable energy. As you will hopefully agree, we are by no means saying that it cannot be done. It can. But only if decisions are based on a solid foundation of knowledge.

The climate crisis is the major global problem of our time. As markets like those for energy have had a crucial role in the development of this problem, their management is a crucial precondition for its resolution. However, this is far from simple in light of classic market failures in respect of, for example, externalities and public goods. This is not a matter of short-term effects but of longer-term impacts lasting decades and centuries. This raises ethical issues about relations between the generations, and thus long-term sustainability. As a global problem, the climate crisis also requires international burden-sharing. Finally, the uncertainties involved are huge, especially in assessing the various tipping points. The role of economics and ethics in handling these problems is the topic of this chapter.

A natural hazard is a naturally occurring extreme event that has a negative effect on people and society or the environment. Natural hazards may have severe implications for human life and can potentially generate economic losses and damage ecosystems. A better understanding of their major causes, probability of occurrence, and consequences enables society to be better prepared to save human lives as well as to invest in adaptation options. Natural hazards related to climate change are identified as one of the Grand Challenges in the Baltic Sea region. Here, we summarize existing knowledge about extreme events in the Baltic Sea region with a focus on the past 200 years as well as on future climate scenarios. The events considered here are the major hydro-meteorological events in the region and include wind storms, extreme waves, high and low sea levels, ice ridging, heavy precipitation, sea-effect snowfall, river floods, heat waves, ice seasons, and drought. We also address some ecological extremes and the implications of extreme events for society (phytoplankton blooms, forest fires, coastal flooding, offshore infrastructure, and shipping). Significant knowledge gaps are identified, including the response of large-scale atmospheric circulation to climate change and also concerning specific events, for example, the occurrence of marine heat waves and small-scale variability in precipitation. Suggestions for future research include the further development of high-resolution Earth system models and the potential use of methodologies for data analysis (statistical methods and machine learning). With respect to the expected impacts of climate change, changes are expected for sea level, extreme precipitation, heat waves and phytoplankton blooms (increase), and cold spells and severe ice winters (decrease). For some extremes (drying, river flooding, and extreme waves), the change depends on the area and time period studied.

Innovation in climate mitigation technologies has seen enormous activity and significant progress in recent years. Innovation has also led to, and exacerbated, trade-offs in relation to sustainable development. (high confidence). Innovation, can leverage action to mitigate climate change by reinforcing other interventions. In conjunction with other enabling conditions innovation can support system transitions to limit warming and help shift development pathways. The currently widespread implementation of solar photovoltaic (solar PV) and LEDs, for instance, could not have happened without technological innovation (high confidence). Technological innovation can also bring about new and improved ways of0 delivering services that are essential to human well-being. At the same time as delivering benefits, innovation can result in trade-offs that undermine both progress on mitigation and progress towards other sustainable development goals. Trade-offs include negative externalities – for instance greater environmental pollution and social inequalities – rebound effects leading to lower net emission reductions or even increases in emissions, and increased dependency on foreign knowledge and providers (high confidence). Effective governance and policy has the potential to avoid and minimise such misalignments (medium evidence, high agreement).

Denmark has decided to reduce its GHG emissions by 70% compared to 1990 levels by 2030, which will imply changes to technologies, economic activities and behaviour. Here alongside, climate change remains a pressing issue, requiring climate information to be integrated into current and future planned activities in order to promote effective risk-coping strategies. This study maps the current use and future demands of data and services within climate and weather across spatiotemporal scales to understand how more targeted and thus more efficient data and climate services can be developed and employed, including upscaling and wider sectoral dissemination. A key to this process is a better understanding of the needs of current and new data and climate service-users. Based on a survey, we investigate how existing and potential data and climate service-users express their need for new data, products, services and tools within the Danish Realm, including Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Danish Oceans. The survey was distributed to existing customers of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) through personal networks and to 31,181 entry points in the Danish Business Register forming an extensive representation within Denmark. The focal sectors include agriculture, energy (including supply), and research and consultancy regarding climate issues. Key results indicate moderate differences in data characteristics between current users of data and climate services depending on their type of organization and sector, the low demand for future data and climate services compared to their current use by respondents and, finally and crucially, trust in suppliers’ reliability.

To limit global warming to less than 2 °C requires a low-carbon transition with very large shares of renewables. Options such as wind, solar and hydro are influenced by both short and longer-term weather and climate variability. While still subject to natural and anthropogenic climate forcing and fluctuating energy prices, water reservoirs can dually operate as storage and production facilities and serve to balance the more volatile production capacity from solar and wind. This paper assesses the dynamics and demands of the hydro-dominated Nordic electricity system and market and identifies untapped potential for climate services based on a combination of literature-based research, documented stakeholder needs and data sources on historical and future conditions. A critical need for both improving the appropriateness and reliability of existing climate services and for developing new tailored solutions for a broader group of stakeholders from the renewable energy sector in the Nordics is observed. The quantification of uncertainties related to short-term weather forecasts and longer-term climate predictions is also found to be important for minimizing the financial risk in relation to systems management and to overall investments in renewable energy.