The impact of climate change on a cost-optimal highly renewable European electricity network

Differences in capacity factors among European countries are more strongly emphasized at the end of the century compared to historic data. This results in a significantly increased photovoltaic share in the cost-optimal power system. In addition, annual hydro inflow patterns of major hydro producers change considerably. System costs increase by 5% until the end of the century and the impact of climate change on these costs is of similar magnitude as differences between the ensemble members. The results show that including climate affected-weather data in power system simulations of the future has an observable effect.