Call for contributions 2023

Call for contributions 2023 - Climate Change and Energy Security: Modelling extreme climate and geopolitical events

Modelling mission context:
The planet is on a trajectory to a 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 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 (relying mostly on wind and solar power). This raises some questions such as if the intersection of energy security and climate accelerate or hamper the transition? Which projects of common interest (PCI) should be prioritized to accelerate the development of a low carbon energy infrastructure? What are the relevant insights from modelling climate-energy scenarios jointly for “critical infrastructure” on a country or EU wide level? 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 the common data) identifies similarities and differences of pathway results and elaborates on common findings relevant to planning energy systems.

Modelling mission scope:
The scope of the modelling analysis and related work should cover:

- Model and compare scenarios for RePower EU while considering (local and global) climate change events;
- Stress-testing the decarbonized energy infrastructure considering extreme weather conditions;
- Energy security and policy from national perspectives versus EU decarbonization targets;
- Impact of climate change on the planning of the energy system; detailed model analysis onsnapshot years and the role of critical infrastructures;
- Linking the results from integrated assessment models to energy system models planning;
- Qualitative and quantitative comparisons among different models;
- Opportunities and challenges of energy sector coupling to address energy security;
- Role of energy networks (pipelines, storage and power grids) in accelerating the uptake of renewable energy.