The Impact of Climate Change on Nuclear Power Supply

Linnerud, Kristin; Mideksa, Torben K.; Eskeland, Gunnar S.

doi:10.5547/issn0195-6574-ej-vol32-no1-6

Cited by 107 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Evidence indicates that river-water temperatures can influence electricity prices (109), nuclear power capacity utilization may fall with high temperature (110), and droughts can shift generation away from hydropower and toward carbon-intensive fuel sources (111,112), but it is unclear whether these findings generalize.…”

Section: Economic Impacts: Energy Supply and Demandmentioning

confidence: 86%

Social and economic impacts of climate

Carleton

Hsiang

2016

Science

801

481

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BACKGROUND: For centuries, thinkers have considered whether and how climatic conditions influence the nature of societies and the performance of economies. A multidisciplinary renaissance of quantitative empirical research has begun to illuminate key linkages in the coupling of these complex natural and human systems, uncovering notable effects of climate on health, agriculture, economics, conflict, migration, and demographics.ADVANCES: Past scholars of climate-society interactions were limited to theorizing on the basis of anecdotal evidence; advances in computing, data availability, and study design now allow researchers to draw generalizable causal inferences tying climatic events to social outcomes. This endeavor has demonstrated that a range of climate factors have substantial influence on societies and economies, both past and present, with important implications for the future.Temperature, in particular, exerts remarkable influence over human systems at many social scales; heat induces mortality, has lasting impact on fetuses and infants, and incites aggression and violence while lowering human productivity. High temperatures also damage crops, inflate electricity demand, and may trigger population movements within and across national borders. Tropical cyclones cause mortality, damage assets, and reduce economic output for long periods. Precipitation extremes harm economies and populations predominately in agriculturally dependent settings. These effects are often quantitatively substantial; for example, we compute that temperature depresses current U.S. maize yields roughly 48%, warming trends since 1980 elevated conflict risk in Africa by 11%, and future warming may slow global economic growth rates by 0.28 percentage points year −1 . Much research aims to forecast impacts of future climate change, but we point out that society may also benefit from attending to ongoing impacts of climate in the present, because current climatic conditions impose economic and social burdens on populations today that rival in magnitude the projected end-ofcentury impacts of climate change. For instance, we calculate that current temperature climatologies slow global economic growth roughly 0.25 percentage points year −1 , comparable to the additional slowing of 0.28 percentage points year −1 projected from future warming. Both current and future losses can theoretically be avoided if populations adapt to fully insulate themselves from the climate-why this has not already occurred everywhere remains a critical open question. For example, clear patterns of adaptation in health impacts and in response to tropical cyclones contrast strongly with limited adaptation in agricultural and macroeconomic responses to temperature. Although some theories suggest these various levels of adaptation ought to be economically optimal, in the sense that costs of additional adaptive actions should exactly balance the benefits of avoided climate-related losses, there is no evidence that allows us to determine how closely observed "adaptation...

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Section: Economic Impacts: Energy Supply and Demandmentioning

confidence: 86%

Social and economic impacts of climate

Carleton

Hsiang

2016

Science

801

481

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Increasing air and water temperature under climate change can reduce the efficiency of power plants. For example, it was found in a previous study that a 1 • C increase in temperature can reduce the supply of nuclear power by about 0.5 % (Linnerud et al, 2011). In some extreme cases such as droughts and heat waves, power plants may not be able to meet temporary demand and may even shut down.…”

Section: Energy Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The integrated Earth system model version 1: formulation and functionality

et al. 2015

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Abstract.The integrated Earth system model (iESM) has been developed as a new tool for projecting the joint human/climate system. The iESM is based upon coupling an integrated assessment model (IAM) and an Earth system model (ESM) into a common modeling infrastructure. IAMs are the primary tool for describing the human-Earth system, including the sources of global greenhouse gases (GHGs) and short-lived species (SLS), land use and land cover change (LULCC), and other resource-related drivers of anthropogenic climate change. ESMs are the primary scientific tools for examining the physical, chemical, and biogeochemical impacts of human-induced changes to the climate system. The iESM project integrates the economic and humandimension modeling of an IAM and a fully coupled ESM within a single simulation system while maintaining the separability of each model if needed. Both IAM and ESM codes are developed and used by large communities and have been extensively applied in recent national and international climate assessments. By introducing heretofore-omitted feedbacks between natural and societal drivers, we can improve scientific understanding of the human-Earth system dynamics. Potential applications include studies of the interactions and feedbacks leading to the timing, scale, and geographic distribution of emissions trajectories and other human influences, corresponding climate effects, and the subsequent impacts of a changing climate on human and natural systems. This paper describes the formulation, requirements, implementation, testing, and resulting functionality of the first version of the iESM released to the global climate community.

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“…However, awareness of the climate vulnerability and adaptation needs of the energy sector is increasing (Mideksa and Kallbekken, 2010;Ebinger and Vergara, 2011;Schaeffer et al, 2012). Several classes of possible impacts of climate change on energy demand and production have been noted: (i) changes in cooling efficiency of thermal and nuclear power generation, resulting in modified availability and efficiency of plants (Linnerud et al, 2011;Rübbelke and Vögele, 2011); (ii) changes in seasonal river flows and in their variability, affecting hydropower potential and generation (Lehner et al, 2005;Hamududu and Killingtveit, 2012); (iii) changes in productivity of crops for bio-energy (Haberl et al, 2011); (iv) vulnerability of energy-related infrastructure to extreme events and sea level rise (Craig, 2011); and finally, changes in space heating and cooling requirements, the focus of the current paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worldwide impacts of climate change on energy for heating and cooling

Labriet¹,

Joshi

Vielle

et al. 2013

Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change

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The energy sector is not only a major contributor to greenhouse gases, it is also vulnerable to climate change and will have to adapt to future climate conditions. The objective of this study is to analyze the impacts of changes in future temperatures on the heating and cooling services of buildings and the resulting energy and macro-economic effects at global and regional levels. For this purpose, the techno-economic TIAM-WORLD (TIMES Integrated Assessment Model) and the general equilibrium GEMINI-E3 (General Equilibrium Model of International-National Interactions between Economy, Energy and Environment) models are coupled with a climate model, PLASIM-ENTS (Planet-Simulator -Efficient Numerical Terrestrial Scheme). The key results are as follows. At the global level, the climate feedback induced by adaptation of the energy system to heating and cooling is found to be insignificant, partly because heating and cooling-induced changes compensate and partly because they represent a limited share of total final energy consumption. However, significant changes are observed at regional levels, more particularly in terms of additional power capacity required to satisfy additional cooling services, resulting in increases in electricity prices. In terms of macro-economic impacts, welfare gains and losses are associated more with changes in energy exports and imports than with changes in energy consumption for heating and cooling. The rebound effect appears to be non-negligible.To conclude, the coupling of models of different nature was successful and showed that the energy and economic impacts of climate change on heating and cooling remain small at the global level, but changes in energy needs will be visible at more local scale.

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The Impact of Climate Change on Nuclear Power Supply

Cited by 107 publications

References 18 publications

Social and economic impacts of climate

Social and economic impacts of climate

The integrated Earth system model version 1: formulation and functionality

Worldwide impacts of climate change on energy for heating and cooling

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