Climate change impact and resilience in the electricity sector: The example of Austria and Germany

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the resilience of possible future electricity and heating systems in regard to climate change and fuel price shocks. The dynamical simulation model HiREPS of the Austrian and German electricity, heating and cooling sectors was used for this analysis. The electricity generation cost and changes in the required secured capacity were used as indicators for the resilience of the energy system. The results show, that the analysed changes in the natural gas price have larger impact on the electricity generation cost than weather variability between different years or climate change. Especially the fossil fuel based scenario showed high sensitivity to the gas price. Analysis of the required secured capacity shows, that in the last quarter of the 21st century the annual maximum residual loads are growing and are dominated by strong cooling demand peaks. Promoting passive cooling options, efficient building designs and options for a controlled down regulation of cooling devices seems to be advisable to avoid installing large thermal power plant backup capacities. The evaluated climate model simulations show only small changes in photovoltaic, wind and hydro power generation for 2051−2080 in Austria and Germany.