The risk to renewable electricity from volcanic eruptions
This study uses the 1815 Tambora eruption as an analogue to demonstrate that a major volcanic event could cause a concurrent, persistent global decline in wind and solar resources, leading to significant electricity generation losses and economic costs that highlight the urgent need to incorporate such low-frequency climate shocks into long-term energy planning.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
The world is shifting its power sources, moving away from burning fossil fuels toward energy captured from the wind and the sun. These renewable sources are clean and essential for a stable climate, but they have a hidden vulnerability: they depend entirely on the weather. If the wind stops blowing or clouds block the sun for too long, the lights can go out. Scientists have long studied how daily storms or seasonal shifts affect these power grids, but there is a much rarer, more dramatic type of weather event that has largely been ignored in energy planning. This is the massive volcanic eruption. When a volcano of sufficient size explodes, it shoots vast amounts of gas and ash high into the upper atmosphere, where they spread out to form a global haze. This haze acts like a thin, sun-blocking veil that can linger for years, cooling the planet and altering wind patterns. While the effects of such eruptions on global temperatures are well known, no one had previously calculated how this specific kind of atmospheric disruption would impact the electricity we rely on every day.
A team of researchers set out to fill this gap by simulating what would happen if a volcano as powerful as the one that erupted in 1815 were to explode today. They chose the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora as their model because it was one of the most significant in recorded history, creating a "year without a summer" that devastated crops worldwide. Using a sophisticated computer model of the Earth's atmosphere, the scientists recreated the conditions of that eruption and watched how the resulting cloud of aerosols—tiny particles of sulfur that reflect sunlight—would interact with the wind and solar resources available to modern power plants. They ran hundreds of simulations to ensure the results were not just a fluke of the computer code, testing how the eruption would behave under different background climates, including a warmer future world and during natural weather cycles like El Niño.
The simulations revealed a sobering reality: a volcanic event of this magnitude would cause a simultaneous drop in both wind and solar power generation across the globe. The haze would block sunlight, directly reducing the energy solar panels could harvest. At the same time, the cooling effect of the aerosols would weaken the large-scale atmospheric circulation that drives wind, leading to calmer air in many of the world's best wind-farming regions. This dual hit would not be a brief interruption; the models showed that the reduction in energy resources would persist for up to twenty months. On average, the study found that global wind and solar resources would decline by roughly 3.6 percent during this period. While a few percent might sound small, the sheer scale of the global energy system means this translates into a massive loss of electricity.
When the researchers translated these physical changes into the language of modern power grids, the numbers became stark. Based on the wind and solar capacity installed around the world in 2024, a single Tambora-sized eruption would result in a loss of approximately 216.9 terawatt-hours of electricity over those twenty months. To put this in perspective, that is the amount of electricity the entire state of California consumed in a single year. The financial cost of this lost energy, calculated using current prices for generating power, would be about 9.2 billion US dollars. However, the impact would not be felt equally everywhere. The study highlighted a crucial disconnect between where the weather is worst and where the damage is most severe. For instance, South America and Africa would experience the largest percentage drops in wind and sun, making them the most physically sensitive regions. Yet, because Asia currently has the largest concentration of wind and solar power plants, it would suffer the greatest absolute loss of electricity, losing more than 111 terawatt-hours. Europe and North America would also face significant losses, though slightly less than Asia.
The researchers also looked at the underlying physics to understand why the wind and sun behaved this way. They found that the volcanic haze cools the tropical atmosphere, which weakens the Hadley circulation—a giant engine that moves heat from the equator toward the poles. This weakening reduces the wind speeds in the subtropics, where many wind farms are located. Interestingly, the models showed that wind speeds actually increased in some high-latitude areas, but these gains were not enough to offset the widespread losses elsewhere. For solar power, the story was slightly more complex. While the volcanic particles blocked direct sunlight, the cooling effect also reduced cloud cover in some areas, which let a little more light through. This cloud reduction partially offset the darkness caused by the ash, but not enough to prevent a net loss in solar energy. The study suggests that these physical mechanisms are robust, meaning they would likely occur even if the eruption happened in a warmer future climate or during a different natural weather phase.
This work serves as a warning for the future of energy planning. As the world becomes more dependent on weather-dependent power, the risk of rare, high-impact climate shocks becomes more critical. The study emphasizes that current energy systems are not designed to handle a two-year period of reduced wind and sun, and standard battery storage is not sufficient to bridge such a long gap. Furthermore, the findings have implications for a controversial idea known as solar geoengineering, where humans might intentionally inject aerosols into the atmosphere to cool the planet. The study suggests that while such an intervention might lower global temperatures, it could unintentionally suppress renewable energy generation, creating a new conflict between climate mitigation and energy security. The researchers conclude that while a massive volcanic eruption is a low-probability event, its potential to disrupt the global power grid is high enough that it must be included in long-term plans for a resilient, low-carbon future.
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