The Impact of Climate Change on a Cost-Optimal Highly Renewable European Electricity Network

TL;DR

This study assesses how climate change affects renewable energy resources and the cost-efficiency of a highly renewable European electricity system using climate model data and system optimization.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of climate change impacts on wind, solar, and hydro resources and their implications for cost-optimal European power system planning.

Findings

Capacity factors vary more across Europe under climate change.

Photovoltaic share increases significantly in the future system.

System costs rise by approximately 5% due to climate change.

Abstract

We use three ensemble members of the EURO-CORDEX project and their data on surface wind speeds, solar irradiation as well as water runoff with a spatial resolution of 12 km and a temporal resolution of 3 hours under representative concentration pathway 8.5 (associated with a temperature increase of 2.6 to 4.8 degrees C until the end of the century) until 2100 to investigate the impact of climate change on wind, solar and hydro resources and consequently on a highly renewable and cost-optimal European power system. The weather data is transformed into power, different aspects such as capacity factors and correlation lengths are investigated and the resulting implications for the European power system are discussed. In addition, we compare a 30-node model of Europe with historical and climate change-affected data, where investments in generation, transmission and storage facilities are optimised for deep carbon dioxide reductions. Differences in capacity factors among European countries are more strongly emphasized at the end of the century compared to historic data. This results in a significantly increased photovoltaic share in the cost-optimal power system. System costs increase by 5% until the end of the century and the impact of climate change on these costs is of similar magnitude as differences between the ensemble members.