Ensuring resilience to extreme weather events increases the ambition of mitigation scenarios on solar power and storage uptake: a study on the Italian power system

Abstract

This study explores compounding impacts of climate change on power system's load and generation, emphasising the need to integrate adaptation and mitigation strategies into investment planning. We combine existing and novel empirical evidence to model impacts on: i) air-conditioning demand; ii) thermal power outages; iii) hydro-power generation shortages. Using a power dispatch and capacity expansion model, we analyse the Italian power system's response to these climate impacts in 2030, integrating mitigation targets and optimising for cost-efficiency at an hourly resolution. We outline different meteorological scenarios to explore the impacts of both average climatic changes and the intensification of extreme weather events. We find that addressing extreme weather in power system planning will require an extra 5-8 GW of photovoltaic (PV) capacity, on top of the 50 GW of the additional solar PV capacity required by the mitigation target alone. Despite the higher initial investments, we find that the adoption of renewable technologies, especially PV, alleviates the power system's vulnerability to climate change and extreme weather events. Furthermore, enhancing short-term storage with lithium-ion batteries is crucial to counterbalance the reduced availability of dispatchable hydro generation.