Climate-resilient future energy systems

Contact person: Marianne Zeyringer, Jan Wohland        
Keywords: Climate change, Renewable Energy, Extreme Events, Energy system design
Research group: Energy System Modelling    
Department of Technology Systems (ITS) 

In future energy systems, weather and climate crucially influence energy supply and demand, from solar and wind generation to heating and cooling demands. Climate change poses new risks for the energy system: operational (e.g. wind droughts), infrastructure (e.g. storms damaging network infrastructure). These risks challenge classical energy system planning and require an improved understanding of climate change impacts on energy relevant variables, as well as potential compounded impacts on energy generation, demand, system infrastructure and interactions in between. Without including these risks, we may design systems that are operationally inadequate and do not meet carbon reduction targets. To properly assess the impact of climate uncertainty on future energy system designs we need novel methods that combine state-of-the-art climate data with ML, for instance using digital twins/energy system models. We invite research proposals that combine methodological advances with relevant applications for policy and industry. A particular focus could be on understudied regions in the Global South.

Topics from natural sciences or technology:

  • Climate and weather uncertainty in long- term energy systems modelling
  • Using thousands of climate years from Single Model Large Ensembles to constrain naturally occurring trends in the wind and solar energy resources
  • Detection and attribution of systematic changes in wind energy potentials due to climate change
  • Inclusion of destructive climatic extreme events into energy system modeling

External partners: 

  • SINTEF AS
  • The Norwegian Computing Center
  • The Institute of Marine Research
  • Institute for Energy Technology
  • Equinor ASA
  • Statkraft AS
  • DNV AS