Climate Change and Energy Security: Modelling extreme climate and geopolitical events

The planet is on a trajectory to at least 2°C of global warming if there are no significant reductions on carbon dioxide emissions within this decade. Droughts lasting more than three months in some regions might become frequent and widespread. Climate change will impact patterns in energy consumption and production. The readiness of the energy system infrastructure in extreme climate events might face unknown challenges that will affect its short-term operations and long-term planning.

At the same time, energy policy initiatives such as the EU Green Deal and REPowerEU aim to accelerate the transformation of the energy sector. The European endeavour to achieve 100% GHG reductions by 2050 has been further exacerbated with the war against Ukraine which has put energy security on top of the agenda. In this regard, energy system planning must consider scenarios that address energy security and geopolitical conditions, climate change events, and decarbonization. To this end, the objective of the workshop is to kick off the EFECT modelling mission of 2023-2024 and discuss related questions on:

• Does the intersection of energy security and climate accelerate or hamper the transition?
• What are the relevant insights from modelling climate-energy scenarios jointly for “critical infrastructure” on a country or EU wide level?
• How do we evaluate energy imports vs. self-sufficiency in the wake of uncertainty and potential supply shocks?
• How to model the robustness and flexibility of energy systems to address these challenges?
• What is the value of energy system flexibility to cope with climate change, to integrate renewables and to strengthen energy security?

Programme

About EFECT

The EFECT forum gathers key European research institutions to analyse latest questions in the landscape of European energy transition strategies for climate neutrality. The forum develops joint modelling exercises that arrange the use of common data for scenarios analyses. Energy and climate modelling teams will use their existing models to address cross-disciplinary challenges on climate change and energy security. It is expected that the model comparison (based on common data and/or assumptions) identifies similarities and differences of pathway results and elaborates on common findings relevant to planning energy systems and brings insights on climate change adaptation.