Vulnerabilities and resilience of European power generation to 1.5 °C, 2 °C and 3 °C warming

By I. Tobin, W. Greuell, S. Jerez, F. Ludwig, Robert Vautard, Michelle T. H. Vliet, François-Marie Bréon. 2018

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The electricity sector is currently considered mainly on the emission side of the climate change equation. In order to limit climate warming to below 2 °C, or even 1.5 °C, it must undergo a rapid transition towards carbon neutral production by the mid-century. Simultaneously, electricity generating technologies will be vulnerable to climate change. Here, we assess the impacts of climate change on wind, solar photovoltaic, hydro and thermoelectric power generation in Europe using a consistent modelling approach across the different technologies. We compare the impacts for different global warming scenarios: +1.5 °C, +2 °C and +3 °C. Results show that climate change has negative impacts on electricity production in most countries and for most technologies. Such impacts remain limited for a 1.5 °C warming, and roughly double for a 3 °C warming. Impacts are relatively limited for solar photovoltaic and wind power potential which may reduce up to 10%, while hydropower and thermoelectric generation may decrease by up to 20%. Generally, impacts are more severe in southern Europe than in northern Europe, inducing inequity between EU countries. We show that a higher share of renewables could reduce the vulnerability of power generation to climate change, although the variability of wind and solar PV production remains a significant challenge.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Pollution, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8def1655a01f555430909c73ba946edb2666d4ed