Decomposing supply-side and demand-side impacts of climate change on the US electricity system through 2050
- PDF / 1,030,830 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 95 Downloads / 173 Views
Decomposing supply-side and demand-side impacts of climate change on the US electricity system through 2050 Daniel C. Steinberg 1 & Bryan K. Mignone 2 & Jordan Macknick 1 & Yinong Sun 1 & Kelly Eurek 1 & Andrew Badger 3 & Ben Livneh 3,4 & Kristen Averyt 5 Received: 22 June 2018 / Accepted: 19 July 2019/ # ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, The National Renewable Energy Laboratory 2020
Abstract Climate change may affect the US electricity system through changes in electricity demand, mediated by increases in average surface temperature, and through changes in electricity supply, mediated by changes in both surface temperature and regional water availability. By coupling projections from four general circulation models (GCMs) with a state-of-the-art US electricity system model—the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS)—this study evaluates both the isolated and combined effects of different climate-mediated drivers of US electricity system change through 2050. Comparing results across climate models allows us to evaluate which effects are robust to uncertainty in projected climate outcomes. Comparing effects of different drivers in isolation and in combination allows us to determine the relative contributions of the climate-mediated effects on system evolution. Our results indicate that national-level energy and economic impacts are largely driven by increases in electricity demand that follow from a consistent increase in surface air temperature that is largely robust to the choice of climate model. Other electricity system changes can be equally or more significant in some regions, but these effects are more regionally variable, less significant when aggregated to the national scale, and less robust to the choice of climate model. The findings show that the impacts of climate change on the electricity system can be understood in terms of fewer drivers and with greater certainty at the national level than at the regional level.
1 Introduction Climate change may affect the evolution of the energy sector through several pathways that alter energy demand or energy supply. On the demand side, changes in air temperature can
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-01902506-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Daniel C. Steinberg [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Climatic Change
alter energy consumption for space heating and cooling—generally increasing electricity consumption for cooling and decreasing consumption of electricity, natural gas, and oil for heating (Sailor and Muñoz 1997; Hor et al. 2005; Mansur et al. 2008). On the supply side, changes in temperature and water availability can alter electricity system dispatch (operation) and expansion (investment). Higher air temperatures can reduce the efficiency and the maximum capacity of thermal power plants (ICF 1995; Jaglom et al. 2014; González-Díaz et al. 2017; Miara et al. 2017), inc
Data Loading...
