A worldwide transition towards “Net zero” requires decarbonization of diverse sectors including the electricity generation sector over the coming decades. On the supply side, renewable energy resources vary on a wide range of time scales, from minute-wise, seasonal, to interannual. In a changing climate, the patterns of renewable resources as well as their variability can also change. On the demand side, extreme weather and climate change are expected to strongly affect demand for energy, while unabated energy demand pathways can also make climate change mitigation more costly, increase pressure on renewable energy resources, and make navigating policy tradeoffs more challenging.
Furthermore, considerable uncertainty underlies prediction of long-term changes in the spatio-temporal pattern of renewable resources. Given that demand must be balanced by generation from largely renewable sources of electricity, there is a critical need for expanded multidisciplinary dialogue between the climate science and modeling communities and energy modeling and transition research groups. This session invites wide-ranging contributions that range across the strategic aspects of accelerating renewable energy transitions in this context, investigations of just energy transitions under climate change, lessons from climate modeling for demand or supply side challenges, techniques for balancing renewable generation with demand management options on various timescales, and new concepts and methods to address these challenges in the context of wide-ranging uncertainties in projecting the variables and scales driving energy systems impacts.
Studies may include (but are not limited to):
Implications of climate variability and change on the energy system and corresponding uncertainties
Energy system impacts of current and future projected variability of renewable resources, and technical approaches to balance this variability
Climate-related factors affecting energy demand, and effects of managing and reducing demand on managing low carbon energy systems as well as bringing about low-carbon energy transitions
Extreme events and spatio-temporal complementarities on both the demand and the supply-side affecting the energy system
Integrated assessment of supply and demand side approaches to low-carbon energy transitions
Spatio-temporal data needs from climate science and modelling to advance understanding of impacts of renewable energy supply and demand under climate change.