Climate Change Threatens the Future of Renewable Energy – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Who knew renewables had a future?

How Climate Change Threatens the Future of Renewables

Monday, 08 September 2025
Evelyn Long

Renewable energy is widely viewed as the cornerstone of a sustainable future. Still, climate change adds an unexpected layer of complexity to its growth. Rising global temperatures, shifting weather patterns and extreme natural events accelerate the need for clean power and threaten its stability.

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Climate Change and Renewable Energy Risks

Solar, wind and hydropower are central to the renewable energy transition. Still, climate change makes them more challenging to rely on. Solar panels lose efficiency during extreme heatwaves. Meanwhile, smoke from massive wildfires — now burning more than twice as much tree cover annually compared to two decades ago — blocks sunlight and reduces output.

Wind energy depends on consistent airflows, yet shifting climate patterns bring unpredictable storms in some regions and weaker currents in others. At the same time, urban environments complicate matters further because tall buildings shield strong winds, lowering performance.

Hydropower faces mounting risks, as prolonged droughts limit water supply and intense floods strain dams and turbines. These challenges underscore a growing concern. Climate-driven variability threatens the reliability of renewables, which makes it clear that solutions must evolve as quickly as the climate.

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Diversification across solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and tidal power offers one of the strongest ways to reduce the risks that climate change brings to renewable energy. By relying on a broader mix, energy systems can balance weaknesses in individual sources and maintain steadier output even when extreme weather strikes.

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Read more: https://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/evelyn-long/how-climate-change-threatens-the-future-of-20250908

I don’t think much of their diversification “solution”. If global warming were to deliver superstorms in the future, then diversification into multiple renewable systems would be no help. A single storm could wreck the solar panels with hail, blow over the wind turbines and power lines, and flood the hydro system.

If only there was a way to create an energy generation system which could be fully encased in armour, with a small geographical footprint which would allow it to be built out of reach any possible flood risk, could be built adjacent to where the energy was needed, to minimise the powerline outage risk, and could run for years without needing new supplies of fuel if the access roads were snowed in or otherwise temporarily unusable. Such an energy system could weather any storm the future might throw at it, other than political storms.

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