Climate2Energy: a framework to consistently include climate change into energy system modeling

Climate models become increasingly sophisticated over time, capitalizing on better modeling techniques, process understanding and computational power. Energy systems become more exposed to climatic changes owing to the increased deployment of weather-dependent renewables as well as heating and cooling systems. There is thus an urgent need for improved usage of climate model simulations in the energy sector.

Here, we present dedicated hourly climate model simulations with CESM2 and a new pipeline to translate climate model output to renewable generation timeseries and heating/cooling demand. We showcase the Climate2Energy workflow that combines bias-correction with existing open-source tools for individual energy sector components (GSEE, windpowerlib, demandninja). We include all relevant types of renewable generation, namely onshore wind, offshore wind, PV, hydropower, and heating/cooling demand in a consistent and synchronized manner. In contrast to assessments drawing from published climate datasets such as CMIP and EURO-CORDEX, we can use non-standard climate model outputs, such as model level winds, air densities, and river discharge.

Using the SSP370 scenario and sampling different phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation to account for climate variability, our results reveal strongly altered future heating (up to 50% reductions) and cooling demand (up to 20-fold increases). In line with previous studies, the impacts on renewable generation are substantially smaller in terms of mean capacity factors. For instance, onshore wind potentials drop by a few percent in many countries while PV potentials increase by similar amounts. More pronounced changes manifest, for example, in the seasonal cycle and in inter-technology complementarity. Furthermore, stochastic optimizations with AnyMOD reveal that a future cost optimal power system looks substantially different from a current one.

Overall, our results underline the need for further analysis of the combined effects of climate change on energy systems. We provide the Climate2Energy pipeline and the data with an open license, aiming to contribute to better and more standardized climate change impact assessments in the energy sector.  

 

REFERENCE

Wohland, J. et al. Climate2Energy: a framework to consistently include climate change into energy system modeling. Environ. Res.: Energy 2, 041001 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1088/2753-3751/ae2870