Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
suggests that thermal electric power production will see modest reductions in output
and eiciency, unless adaptations are undertaken, and that some transmission and dis-
tribution capacities may also be reduced somewhat. The more serious issues are at a re-
gional scale, often episodic over relatively short terms: e.g., loods, droughts/heat waves.
A particular concern is coincident events: e.g., droughts combined with heat waves;
and interdependencies are not fully storms, understood: e.g., between electricity and
gas supply systems, or between regional electric utilities. Interregional and intraregional
bulk power transmission has the potential to add resilience to the supply system, but
such linkages can themselves be vulnerable to disruptions (as in the case of the 2003
Northeast blackout).
3) RENEWABLE ENERGY POTENTIALS
Since SAP 4.5 and GCRP, 2009, knowledge about implications of climate change for re-
although many answers await improvements in data. Toward that end, there has been
substantial progress in understanding the need for, and initiating international collabo -
rations to pursue, the downscaling of climate data under various emission scenarios
to inform the assessment of renewable energy potentials. This includes eforts to both
beter relect renewable resource potential within integrated models and to evaluate im-
pacts of climate change on the future potential of these resources under various emis -
sion scenarios. While these developments relect a much broader awareness of the need
to understand potential climate impacts on renewable energy resources, the insights
from these models, analyses, and existing case studies tend to provide information on
the anticipated impacts on total generation from renewables but less insight on tempo-
ral impacts of these resources that efect energy supply (World Bank, 2011) . With this
constraint, even improved downscaling of climate data and regional modeling will only
marginally improve the understanding of unit and utility level generation impacts for
renewables.
As a result, there still remains a need for more detailed spatial and temporal data on
likely energy system impacts under various climate scenarios. Without these data to in-
form renewable energy supply estimates, planners have been responding by seeking to
ensure more system lexibility (reservoir expansion and beter management for hydro-
power development, alternative storage technologies for solar, improved transmission
and dispatch protocols for wind, etc.) to manage these uncertainties. In addition, there
have been signiicant improvements in accurate short-term forecasting for wind and so-
lar resources over the last three to four years with commercial irms starting to ill this
space by providing tools and forecasting data to utility clients.
The hydropower sector, because it is such a major component of many national and
regional energy supply systems and serves as a primary base load resource for many
countries, provides early examples of potential impacts of climate change variability on
tions of Climate Change for Hydropower Supply). Increased use of models to simulate
river low under diferent scenarios to assess hydropower generation in electricity gen-
eration (et al., 2009; de Lucena et al., 2009), along with the potential economic and inan-
cial implications for speciic sites are being used on a more regular basis. These models
