Nature Commun. 6, 10014 (2015)

Future atmospheric conditions must be taken into account in evaluating the long-term effectiveness of energy supply from renewable sources. Now, Sonia Jerez and collaborators have explored the potential effects of climate change on the electricity produced by photovoltaic installations in Europe. They considered a set of scenarios describing the future evolution of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, solar irradiance, surface air temperature and surface wind velocity. Variations of solar power production were calculated based on the impact that these atmospheric parameters have on the operating temperature of the photovoltaic panels. In the worst-case scenario of a continued increase of greenhouse gas emissions, the power generation may decrease by about 10% by 2100 in countries in northern Europe, whereas it should remain unchanged or slightly decrease by 2% in southern and central Europe, where the highest density of solar power plants is expected. Additional climate- and technology-related factors should be considered to refine this prediction, yet these results confirm that photovoltaics will be a source to rely on in the next century.