TY - JOUR
TI - Effects of climate change on regional energy systems focussing on space heating and cooling: A case study of Austria
AU - Hausl Stephan
AU - Themessl Matthias
AU - Gadocha Sabine
AU - Schardinger Ingrid
AU - Biberacher Markus
AU - Castellazzi Bernhard
AU - Gobiet Andreas
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2014
VL - 18
IS - 3
SP - 771
EP - 786
PT - Article
AB - Climate change affects regions differently and therefore also climate change  effects on energy systems need to be analyzed region specific. The objective  of the study presented is to show and analyze these effects on regional  energy systems following a high spatial resolution approach. Three regional  climate scenarios are downscaled to a 1 km resolution and error corrected for  three different testing regions in Austria. These climate data are used to  analyze effects of climate change on heating and cooling demand until the  year 2050. Potentials of renewable energies such as solar thermal,  photovoltaic, ambient heat and biomass are also examined. In the last process  step the outcomes of the previous calculations are fed into two energy system  models, where energy system optimizations are executed, which provide  information concerning optimal setups and operations of future energy  systems. Due to changing climate strong changes for the energy demand  structure are noticed; lower heat demand in winter (between -7 and -15% until  2050) and - strongly differing between regions - higher cooling demand in  summer (up to +355%). Optimization results show that the composition of  energy supply carriers is barely affected by climate change, since other  developments such as refurbishment actions, price developments and regional  biomass availabilities are more influencing within this context.