Abstract
Climate change tends to negatively affect the power sector, inter alia, by causing cooling problems in power plants and impairing the water supply required for hydropower generation. In the future, when global warming is expected to increase, autonomous adaptation to climate change via international electricity markets inducing reallocations of power generation may not be sufficient to prevent supply disruptions anymore. Furthermore, the consequent changes of supply patterns and electricity prices might cause an undesirable redistribution of wealth both between individual power suppliers and between suppliers and consumers. This study ascertains changes in European power supply patterns and electricity prices caused by on-going global warming as well as the associated redistribution of wealth for different climate change scenarios. The focus of the analysis is on short-term effects. Our results confirm that autonomous adaptation in the power sector should be complemented by planned public adaptation in order to preserve energy security and to prevent undesired distributional effects.
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Notes
During the 2009-Brazilian blackout, 40 % of the National Interconnected System’s load was interrupted as a consequence of adverse weather patterns (Ordacgi Filho 2010).
Itteilag (2008) states that peak electricity demand in the US, typically for summertime air conditioning, is growing at 2.6 % per year and he discusses options to reduce electricity peaks and to prevent a peak electricity shortfall.
About 43 % of the EU’s water demand is used as cooling water by power authorities (EUREAU 2009: 84).
It should be taken into account that the electricity sector in Europe is not consisting of state-controlled monopolies anymore. Instead electricity supplying companies operate in a liberalised market. Sites for the generation of electricity may be located in another country than the domicile of the supplier owning this site. The attribution of rents to national states where the respective power generation takes place is therefore a simplifying procedure.
Electricity suppliers might also adapt by planned activities, e.g. by improving power plant efficiencies, but might themselves be incapable to reduce the risk of disruptions efficiently. The public sector might support private entities, e.g. by providing better information about climate risks. Individual adaptation is also constrained by institutional processes (Adger et al. 2005: 78).
The power sector may not conduct such adaptation of its own accord because, e.g. it may not hold sufficient information about climate risks and investment cost is high.
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We thank Christian Egenhofer, two anonymous referees and the Deputy Editor of this journal, Richard Richels, for their very helpful comments and suggestions.
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Rübbelke, D., Vögele, S. Short-term distributional consequences of climate change impacts on the power sector: who gains and who loses?. Climatic Change 116, 191–206 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0498-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-012-0498-1