Climate-resilient planning of renewable energy systems in North-West Europe

Marianne Zeyringer,David Brayshaw,James Price,Hannah Bloomfield

doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu22-11692

Abstract

&lt;p&gt;Achieving the Paris Agreement goal requires a rapid decarbonisation of the energy system; which, can be achieved by electrified and interconnected systems with a high share of variable renewable energy sources (VREs, i.e. wind and solar). In such systems, weather and climate have a crucial influence on energy supply and demand and climate change is expected to have complex impacts through changes in weather statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Energy and power system models are key tools to analyse the integration of high shares of renewables into energy systems. However, modellers usually use historic weather data&amp;#160; to plan future renewable based&amp;#160; energy systems. This might lead to designing systems that are operationally inadequate or do not meet emission reduction targets. Here we will answer the question:&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to design 2035 renewable-based and climate-resilient energy systems for North-Western Europe? We will focus on testing the hypothesis that climate change alters spatial deployment patterns of renewable energy technologies and integration options.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;To do so we will use historic (ERA5 reanalysis) and future weather data in the highRES electricity system model&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and apply it to North-Western Europe.&amp;#160; The dataset of future weather&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; contains hourly time-series of weather and energy variables which have been climate-adjusted to include the impact of climate change from five different climate model simulations, with the climate change impacts centred on the year 2035 (i.e. the mean change seen from 2020-2050).&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Referencs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Zeyringer, M., Price, J., Fais, B., Li, P.-H. &amp; Sharp, E. Designing low-carbon power systems for Great Britain in 2050 that are robust to the spatiotemporal and inter-annual variability of weather. &lt;em&gt;Nat. Energy&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;3&lt;/strong&gt;, 395&amp;#8211;403 (2018).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;2. Bloomfield, H. &amp; Brayshaw, D. Future climate projections of surface weather variables, wind power, and solar power capacity factors across North-West Europe. (2021). Dataset. https://researchdata.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/331&lt;/p&gt;

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