Posters

Abstract

Climate change increases the occurrence of weather extremes such as heatwaves, bushfires, flooding, and lightning strikes, thus leading to growing operational and economic risks for wind energy projects. While current modelling shows these events increasingly stress renewable infrastructure and grid operations (Renewable Energy World, n.d.), there is limited publicly available benchmarking data of real-world industry practices to mitigate them. This paper presents the findings of a 2025 industry survey targeting wind farm developers, operators, turbine OEMs, and leading technical advisors aimed at establishing a baseline of current resilience strategies across planning, design, financing and operations. The survey addresses five key domains: 1. Climate risk evaluation methods used during early-stage site identification. 2. Structural and engineering adaptations to withstand extreme environmental conditions. 3. Integration of climate change projections into project design and operational planning. 4. Common barriers in implementing climate resilience measures and approaches to overcome them. 5. Long-term O&M strategies to manage evolving risks. Parallel questions to OEMs explore how manufacturing and product development incorporate extreme climate considerations, including material selection, testing protocols, and after-market support. Furthermore, questions to technical advisors target how climate resilience is being assessed and viewed by banking institutions and investors. The analysis highlights significant variation in resilience practices in onshore contexts, with leading practices including targeted micro-siting to avoid flood zones, adequate drainage, and lightning protection retrofits for turbines in high-strike zones. However, organisational and financial barriers remain, with cost constraints, lack of reliable data and internal knowledge gaps cited as the main barriers identified.