Impacts of rising air temperatures and emissions mitigation on electricity demand and supply in the United States: a multi-model comparison

McFarland, James; Zhou, Yuyu; Clarke, Leon; Sullivan, Patrick; Colman, Jesse; Jaglom, Wendy S.; Colley, Michelle; Patel, Pralit; Eom, Jiyong; Kim, Son H.; Kyle, Page; Schultz, Peter A.; Venkatesh, Boddu N.; Haydel, Juanita; Mack, Charlotte; Creason, Jared

doi:10.1007/s10584-015-1380-8

Cited by 68 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Almost all previous studies focus on climate impacts to annual building energy consumption instead of peak electricity load [4]. Several studies assess changes to annual building energy demand at the national scale [18][19][20][21][22][23]; others focus on a particular region [24], using finer-scale temperature and infrastructure data [24]. While these studies help to predict the increased primary energy burden resulting from climate change, they do not indicate how climate change will affect the capacity needed during peak times.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of rising air temperatures on electric transmission ampacity and peak electricity load in the United States

Bartos

Chester

Johnson

et al. 2016

Environ. Res. Lett.

136

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Climate change may constrain future electricity supply adequacy by reducing electric transmission capacity and increasing electricity demand. The carrying capacity of electric power cables decreases as ambient air temperatures rise; similarly, during the summer peak period, electricity loads typically increase with hotter air temperatures due to increased air conditioning usage. As atmospheric carbon concentrations increase, higher ambient air temperatures may strain power infrastructure by simultaneously reducing transmission capacity and increasing peak electricity load. We estimate the impacts of rising ambient air temperatures on electric transmission ampacity and peak per-capita electricity load for 121 planning areas in the United States using downscaled global climate model projections. Together, these planning areas account for roughly 80% of current peak summertime load. We estimate climate-attributable capacity reductions to transmission lines by constructing thermal models of representative conductors, then forcing these models with future temperature projections to determine the percent change in rated ampacity. Next, we assess the impact of climate change on electricity load by using historical relationships between ambient temperature and utility-scale summertime peak load to estimate the extent to which climate change will incur additional peak load increases. We find that by mid-century (2040-2060), increases in ambient air temperature may reduce average summertime transmission capacity by 1.9%-5.8% relative to the 1990-2010 reference period. At the same time, peak per-capita summertime loads may rise by 4.2%-15% on average due to increases in ambient air temperature. In the absence of energy efficiency gains, demand-side management programs and transmission infrastructure upgrades, these load increases have the potential to upset current assumptions about future electricity supply adequacy. Glossary q c  Convective heat loss from conductor to air (W m -1 ) q r  Radiative heat loss from conductor to surroundings (W m -1 ) q s  Radiative heat transfer from sun to conductor (W m -1 ) q j  Resistive heating of the conductor (W m -1 )

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of rising air temperatures on electric transmission ampacity and peak electricity load in the United States

Bartos

Chester

Johnson

et al. 2016

Environ. Res. Lett.

136

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“…Adaptation responses to offset these negative impacts of climate change will influence electricity consumption and load patterns. While demand for space heating is expected to decrease in response to less-frequent cold days, increased adoption and operation of air conditioning due to growing demand for space cooling during hot days will put upward pressure on electricity consumption as well as daily and seasonal peak loads (14,18,(25)(26)(27)(28)(29).…”

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confidence: 99%

North–south polarization of European electricity consumption under future warming

Wenz

Levermann

Auffhammer

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

135

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There is growing empirical evidence that anthropogenic climate change will substantially affect the electric sector. Impacts will stem both from the supply side-through the mitigation of greenhouse gases-and from the demand side-through adaptive responses to a changing environment. Here we provide evidence of a polarization of both peak load and overall electricity consumption under future warming for the world's third-largest electricity market-the 35 countries of Europe. We statistically estimate country-level dose-response functions between daily peak/total electricity load and ambient temperature for the period 2006-2012. After removing the impact of nontemperature confounders and normalizing the residual load data for each country, we estimate a common dose-response function, which we use to compute national electricity loads for temperatures that lie outside each country's currently observed temperature range. To this end, we impose end-of-century climate on today's European economies following three different greenhouse-gas concentration trajectories, ranging from ambitious climate-change mitigation-in line with the Paris agreement-to unabated climate change. We find significant increases in average daily peak load and overall electricity consumption in southern and western Europe (∼3 to ∼7% for Portugal and Spain) and significant decreases in northern Europe (∼−6 to ∼−2% for Sweden and Norway). While the projected effect on European total consumption is nearly zero, the significant polarization and seasonal shifts in peak demand and consumption have important ramifications for the location of costly peak-generating capacity, transmission infrastructure, and the design of energy-efficiency policy and storage capacity. electricity consumption | peak load | climate change | adaptation C hanges in the Earth's climate stemming from greenhouse-gas emissions (1) will impact natural and human systems worldwide (2, 3). The energy sector uniquely connects to anthropogenic climate change, as it plays an important role in both mitigation and adaptation (4-8). To meet the long-run mitigation targets agreed to at the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015, the energy sector must undergo a fundamental transformation toward low-and zero-carbon sources of energy (9, 10). Electricity is anticipated to be a key to decarbonizing the transport sector and it will play a much larger role in space and water heating (9). At the same time, the power sector itself is highly climatesensitive-on both the supply side and the demand side. Energy supply depends on the availability of water to cool power generators and is potentially affected by changing flow regimes for run-of-river hydropower (11). Further, higher temperatures reduce transmission capacity of high-voltage power lines (12), lower the efficiency of some fossil-fuel-powered generators, and depress yields of certain crops used for bioenergy (13). On the demand side, short-term human responses to weather shocks and long-term adaptation to changing cl...

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“…Figure 4(a) indicates the daily maximum CDDs double in the MMM projections, with the increase for the event average showing a more modest increase. The projected increase in CDDs during heat waves has major implications for meeting future energy demand and is likely to place substantial stress on the energy system (USGCRP 2018), much more so than will increases in mean temperature alone (Jaglom et al 2014, McFarland et al 2015, Larsen et al 2017. The exposed population to extreme daily maximum apparent temperature and daily mean temperature ( figure 4(b)) is also seen to double in RCP8.5 projections by mid-century.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Projected increase in the spatial extent of contiguous US summer heat waves and associated attributes

Lyon

Barnston

Coffel

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves are all expected to increase as the climate warms in response to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The focus of this study is on another dimension of heat waves, their spatial extent, something that has not been studied systematically by researchers but has important implications for associated impacts. Of particular interest are spatially contiguous heat wave regions, examined here over the conterminous US for the May-September season in both the current climate and climate model projections from the CMIP5 archive (11 models total) using the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 radiative forcing scenarios. Given their myriad impacts, heat waves are defined using multiple temperature variables, one which includes atmospheric moisture. In addition to their spatial extent, several other physical attributes are computed across contiguous heat wave regions, including a proxy for energy use. An estimate of the human population exposed to current and future heat waves is also evaluated. We find that historical climate model simulations, in aggregate, show good fidelity in capturing key characteristics of heat waves in the current climate while projections show a substantial increase in spatial extent and other attributes by mid-century under both scenarios, though generally less for RCP4.5, as expected. Overall, the study presents a framework for examining the behavior, and associated impacts, of a frequently overlooked aspect of heat waves. The projected increases in the spatial extent and other attributes of heat waves reported here provides a new perspective on some of the potential consequences of the continued increase in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

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Impacts of rising air temperatures and emissions mitigation on electricity demand and supply in the United States: a multi-model comparison

Cited by 68 publications

References 22 publications

Impacts of rising air temperatures on electric transmission ampacity and peak electricity load in the United States

Impacts of rising air temperatures on electric transmission ampacity and peak electricity load in the United States

North–south polarization of European electricity consumption under future warming

Projected increase in the spatial extent of contiguous US summer heat waves and associated attributes

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