Energy Demand Challenges of Electrification of Cold-Climate Mega-Cities in a Changing Climate: The Case of New York City

Cities are transitioning to a decarbonized energy state to contribute to global warming reduction and for energy security.  As cities evolve into this future energy state the compounding effect of a changing local and global climate plays a major background.  Key energy sectors to be transitioned are the transportation (EV) and the buildings.  In Mega-Cities buildings represent the largest energy demand and atmospheric carbon sources mostly due to the energy required for cooling and heating the spaces.  For cold climate cities this transition represents major a major shift to evolve from carbon based space heating into electrification prompting new winter peaks never envisioned with direct implications on the local climate by reduction of the winter Urban Heat Island and potential improvement of the air quality.  This work presents a framework to project new energy demands for New York Metro Region under a transition to full electrification and a changing climate towards 2050.  For this region, buildings account for 70% of the total energy consumed and carbon emissions. We focus on an electrified winter for buildings and EV by evaluating the energy infrastructure and environmental impacts of such major shifts.  For future climate forcing two Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs) climate scenarios are used of the Sixth Assessment of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), 245 and 585. The future climate ensemble used is the downscaled 12 km resolution for the Continental US from the IM3/HyperFACETS Thermodynamic Global Warming Simulation Dataset. The Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with a multi-layer building environment parameterization and building energy model, is used to perform the analysis. Results indicate a new winter energy peak increase of two fold factor (from 8GW to 16 GW).  The presentation will outline context, methods, results, and challenges to meet these goals.