Climate change impact and resilience in the electricity sector: The example of Austria and Germany

The Impact of Climate Change on Swiss Hydropower

“…Furthermore, we see more nuanced effects from endogenously modeling price rather than taking prices to be exogenously set as in Gaudard et al [36]. In relation to the study by Totschnig et al [31], our results are only partially comparable, as Totschnig et al look at different countries, use different policy scenarios, and combine electricity and heat generation. The decrease in RoR generation of around 5.5% is similar to our findings for a dry year for Switzerland.…”

“…On the one hand, this allows us to clearly pinpoint the effect of climate change on Swiss hydropower and its market implications. On the other hand, we are not able to show the overall impact of climate change on the electricity system as some seasonalities underlying our inputs such as high demand in winter and low demand in summer might shift under climate change (see e.g., [7,8,31,[51][52][53]). …”

“…Considering Germany and Austria in more detail, Totschnig et al [31] see a general decline in runoff ranging from −14 to −3%, depending on the underlying climate model. This decline is due to increases in evapotranspiration by the end of the century described in the A1B SRES scenario.…”

“…In addition to these generation potential studies, there are several studies that also include the potential impact on the electricity market (i.e., for the EU [4,22], the U.S. [13,26,27], the Iberian Peninsula [28,29], Norway [30], and Austria and Germany [31]). Boehlert et al [26] combine a monthly water resources systems model with an electric sector planning model to analyze the impact of climate change on U.S. hydropower generation.…”

“…While there are several similarities to Swissmod, HiREPS puts a stronger focus on integrated power and heating simulation and also covers investments in new power or heat generation infrastructure. Totschnig et al [31] take into account three different policy scenarios; the grey (business-as-usual scenario with no particular focus on renewable energies), green (focus on renewable energies but not on energy efficiency, and blue policy scenario (additional effort on energy efficiency). The authors show that mean annual generation by run-of-river hydropower plants in Austria and Germany decreases by 5.5% in the 2051-2080 period and that there is a clear shift from summer to spring due to the earlier runoff peak.…”