TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wenz, Leonie
A1  - Levermann, Anders
A1  - Auffhammer, Maximilian
T1  - North-south polarization of European electricity consumption under future warming
T2  - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
N2  - There is growing empirical evidence that anthropogenic climate change will substantially affect the electric sector. Impacts will stem both from the supply sidethrough the mitigation of greenhouse gasesand from the demand sidethrough 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 worlds third-largest electricity marketthe 35 countries of Europe. We statistically estimate country-level doseresponse 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 doseresponse function, which we use to compute national electricity loads for temperatures that lie outside each countrys currently observed temperature range. To this end, we impose end-of-century climate on todays European economies following three different greenhouse-gas concentration trajectories, ranging from ambitious climate-change mitigationin line with the Paris agreementto unabated climate change. We find significant increases in average daily peak load and overall electricity consumption in southern and western Europe (similar to 3 to similar to 7% for Portugal and Spain) and significant decreases in northern Europe (similar to-6 to similar 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.
KW  - electricity consumption
KW  - peak load
KW  - climate change
KW  - adaptation
Y1  - 2017
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/46353
SN  - 0027-8424
VL  - 114
SP  - E7910
EP  - E7918
PB  - National Acad. of Sciences
CY  - Washington
ER  -