|
"The impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on the grid, mostly in the form of drought and heat waves, are going to get worse under climate change," said Jordan Kern, assistant professor of forestry and environment resources at NC State. "Even as the West Coast grid moves away from fossil fuels toward wind and solar, these extreme weather events will still impact system reliability and the price of power."
Published in the journal Earth's Future, the two studies project future power supply and demand under separate scenarios. In the first study, researchers used computer models to simulate the impacts of climate change on the current power grid in California and the Pacific Northwest. They evaluated the grid's price and reliability under 11 different climate scenarios between 2030 and 2060, drawing on multiple scientific models for how the climate would change under a "worst-case scenario" of fossil fuel emissions, and another less severe scenario.
"The worst-case scenario is worth looking at even if there's some evidence that the world is going to reduce fossil fuel emissions enough to avoid it," Kern said.
The researchers found greater risk of power blackouts in summer and early fall, largely driven by extreme heat in California that causes high demand for power as people cool their homes. They projected there would be shortfall events in all but one scenario where climate change affected power generation in both regions simultaneously.
However, they noted these power shortfalls would remain relatively rare. The maximum under the worst case was 72 hours of West Coast-wide power supply shortages across 31 years.
advertisement
| 
