21st Century Climate Change Impacts on Key Properties of a Large-Scale Renewable-Based Electricity System

Abstract

Wind and solar sources currently drive an increased weather-dependent electricity production because of decreasing costs and efforts to mitigate climate change. Unfortunately, some degree of climate change appears to be unavoidable. We use different projections of climatic outcomes over the 21st century to assess how important key metrics of a highly renewable electricity system are affected by climate change. Smail Kozarcanin, Hailiang Liu, Gorm Bruun Andresen sko@eng.au.dk (S.K.) gba@eng.au.dk (G.B.A.) HIGHLIGHTS Climate change shows impacts on large-scale metrics of a European electricity system Largest climate impacts are observed within fully winddominated electricity systems 6 high-resolution CMIP5 GCMs under the forcing of three IPCC RCPs have been used State-of-the-art wind and solar capacity factors and electricity demand data were used Kozarcanin et al., SUMMARYFalling prices and significant technology developments currently drive an increased weather-dependent electricity production from renewables. In light of the changing climate, it is relevant to investigate to what extent climate change directly impacts future highly weather-dependent electricity systems. Here, we use three IPCC CO 2 concentration pathways for the period 2006-2100 with six high-resolution climate experiments for the European domain. Climate data are used to calculate bias-adjusted 3-hourly time series of wind and solar generation and temperature-corrected demand time series for 30 European countries using a state-of-the-art methodology. Weather-driven electricity system analysis is then applied to compare five key metrics of highly renewable electricity systems. We find that climate change changes the need for dispatchable electricity by up to 20%. The remaining key metrics, such as the benefit of transmission and storage as well as requirements for balancing capacity and reserves, change by up to 5%.

Zonal and Nodal Models of Energy Market in European Union

“…The European electricity system is currently undergoing major changes [27,28]. The European Union, in recent years, has made significant and noticeable progress in implementing its plans for the united internal electricity market [29].…”

Interannual weather variability and the challenges for Great Britain’s electricity market design

“…The analysis does not include the additional uncertainty which could arise with a changing climate. New generations of high resolution climate models can also be used to understand potential impacts of climate change on weather-dependent power system components, such as demand [41] renewable generation [42][43][44][45][46][47] and power system operation [48,49]. As energy policy evolves to better reflect inter-annual variability, consideration will also be needed to such growing understanding of longerterm changes.…”

Impact of climatic, technical and economic uncertainties on the optimal design of a coupled fossil-free electricity, heating and cooling system in Europe

“…Even if we stop emitting anthropogenic GHG today, temperature increase is inevitable by the end of 21st century, which could impact weather-dependent future energy systems in two ways, supply and demand. Kozarcanin et al [9] use weather-driven modelling to investigate the impact of climate change on highly renewable European electricity systems for three distinctive scenarios. They find that climate change could modify the need for dispatchable electricity up to 20%, but barely affects the benefits of transmission and storage, whose change is below 5%.…”