Identifying climate related hazards relevant for the Norwegian Energy System

Renewable energy production plays a major role in Norway’s energy sector accounting for approximately 98% of the national electricity production. Unusually little precipitation in southern Norway in year 2021 resulted in reduced filling of the hydropower reservoirs. Accompanied with calm wind conditions over major wind-energy producing areas of Europe this led to exceptionally high electricity prices in Norway during winter 2021/2022.

As most renewable energy sources depend inherently on weather and climate condition, they are sensitive to large-scale weather regimes, natural climate variability, climate change and extreme weather events that can threaten the renewable energy system’s stability and reliability. By transitioning to more renewable sources such as hydro, wind and solar power, societies may expose themselves to an increased risk of potential instabilities and unreliability in the power supply. Within the SusRenew project we expand on the concept of compound events by looking at climate hazards that are specifically relevant for the energy system in Norway, and by looking at the possible joint occurrence of hazard pairs in different regions that are linked in the northern European energy system.