Abstract
The impact of climate change is evident in the variability of weather patterns, hence, affecting electricity generation and consumption. Existing literature examines the effect of humidity and temperature on energy, but suffers from omitted variable bias. Here, we adopt several parameters namely ambient air pollution, precipitation, surface pressure, dew-frost point, relative humidity, wind speed, earth skin temperature, cooling degree days, heating degree days, solar and wind generation, cumulative installed PV power, and wind turbine capacity, solar and wind electricity consumption, and energy price index to investigate the role of climatic and energy-related factors on households, industry sector, commercial and public service attributed electricity consumption in Norway. Our machine learning estimator accounts for climate change heterogeneity, and historical effects while controlling omitted-variable and misspecification bias. The empirical assessment shows the radiative forcing effect of ambient air pollution decreases electricity consumption. In contrast, the scavenging effect of rainfall intensity on ambient air pollution improves both wind and solar electricity consumption. Rising levels of earth skin temperature, and humidity increases solar and wind electricity consumption whereas dew-frost point drops temperature, and humidity to improve human comfort. Our study highlights that energy price index is critical to the adoption of solar and wind energy technologies.
Highlights
IntroductionThe combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas releases carbon dioxide––which predominantly drives anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by increasing atmospheric concentration that impacts future global climate conditions (Blanco et al, 2014)
Using a polynomial estimation procedure, we find that installed wind turbine capacity predicts wind electricity consumption by 96% whereas wind electricity generation predicts wind electricity consumption by 100% (Fig. 1)
We find that increasing energy price index improves electricity consumption including households and commercial sector, we observe a decline in solar, wind, and industrial sector-based electricity consumption
Summary
The combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas releases carbon dioxide––which predominantly drives anthropogenic GHG emissions by increasing atmospheric concentration that impacts future global climate conditions (Blanco et al, 2014). GHG emissions became the focal point at the global scale during the Kyoto protocol in 1997, and Paris agreement adopted by 196 parties in December 2015 and effected in November 2016. The main objective of the Paris agreement required signatory countries to reduce GHG emissions––to control the rise in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius (Rogelj et al, 2019). Electricity consumption has historically increased due to economic growth, population dynamics, and modernization of society (Owusu and Asumadu, 2016)
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