Climate change impacts on large-scale electricity system design decisions for the 21st Century

TL;DR

This study analyzes how climate change might influence the design of large-scale renewable electricity systems in Europe, finding that climate change does not significantly affect key system metrics from now to 2100.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive climate-driven analysis of renewable electricity system design decisions considering future climate scenarios in Europe.

Findings

Climate change has negligible impact on system design metrics.

Weather-dependent renewable generation remains stable under climate change.

System optimization parameters are robust to climate variations.

Abstract

Efforts to reduce climate change, but also falling prices and significant technology developments currently drive an increased weather-dependent electricity production from renewable electricity sources. In light of the changing climate, it is highly relevant to investigate the extent of weather changes that directly impacts the best system design decisions for these weather-dependent technologies. Here, we use three IPCC representative CO2 concentrations pathways for the period 2006--2100 with six high-resolution climate experiments for the European domain. Climate elements are used to calculate bias adjusted 3-hourly time series of wind and solar generation, and temperature corrected demand time series for 30 European countries using state-of-the-art methodology. Weather-driven electricity system analysis methodology is then applied to compare four key metrics of highly renewable electricity systems. We find that climate change does not have a discernible impact on the key metrics of the combined electricity system dynamics, and conclude that the effect on important system design parameters can likely be ignored.