Impacts of climate change on temporal fragmentation of energy demand in Europe

The energy demand will potentially be affected by climate change in the future. The heating needs are expected to decrease while the cooling needs are expected to increase under projected future global warming. The question addressed in this work in the impact and the quantification of this changes on the temporal fragmentation of energy demand during winter and summer. This fragmentation creates a need for flexibility in energy production which constitutes a challenge for energy systems. In this work, the question is addressed by exploiting a biais-corrected and downscaled climate projections from CMIP6 simulations using a statistical method at a spatial resolution of 0.25° x 0.25° over Europe. Ten variables were used to estimate the main change on energy demand related to heating degree days (HDD) and cooling degree days (CDD) under four scenarios (ssp1-2.6, ssp2-4.6, ssp3-7.0 and ssp5-8.5). The results showed a large decrease of HDD over Europe and an increase of CDD under all of scenarios ssp considered in this work. The analyses of the heating and air conditioning period duration and frequency showed a fragmentation of the periods of use of heating during winter in the future which can lead potentially to a fragmentation of energy demand related to heating. On the other hand, the periods of use of air conditioning in summer are expected to be more frequent and longer but still very fragmented in time compared to the present climate.