The global transition towards “Net zero” requires rapid decarbonisation across multiple sectors, with the electricity system playing a key role. On the supply side, renewable energy resources exhibit variability across multiple timescales, from minutes to seasons to interannual. Climate change is expected to alter not only the mean patterns of renewable resources but also their variability and the possibility of disruptive, compound, and cascading extreme events. On the demand side, extreme weather events and climate change will affect both overall consumption and peak load. Unmanaged demand growth can raise mitigation costs, intensify pressure on renewable resources, create supply reliability and affordability challenges. Considerable uncertainty remains in projecting long-term spatio-temporal changes in renewable sources, demand and low probability extremes that can disrupt the energy system. There is an urgent need for deeper dialogue between climate science, climate risk, and energy systems research communities.
This session invites contributions on pathways to accelerate energy transitions under climate change; approaches to just and equitable transitions; insights from climate modelling for demand or supply challenges; approaches for balancing supply with demand and flexibility across timescales; innovative concepts to address uncertainty in energy-climate interactions; implications of climate risks for the energy transition. We encourage model-based, empirical, and conceptual studies, including:
*Impacts of climate change and variability, including extremes, on energy systems, and associated uncertainties
*Effects of renewable resource variability on energy systems, and technical approaches, including storage and interconnection, to balance supply and demand
*Climate-related drivers of energy demand, and the role of demand reduction and management in low-carbon transitions
*Influences of extreme events and spatio-temporal complementarities on both demand and supply within energy systems
*Integrated assessments combining supply and demand side approaches to low-carbon transitions
*Spatio-temporal data needs from climate modelling to advance understanding of renewable supply and demand under climate change
*Implications of climate change and extreme events for energy system reliability and security of supply, including outage risk and electricity price impacts
*Risk-modelling frameworks for quantifying climate-related risks to the energy system