Estimating risks for Italian Energy Sector from Projected Climate Change

摘要

A better understanding of vulnerabilities of electric system is necessary for defining measures to achieve a better resilience against threats from climatic changes. Both gradual climate changes (as temperature increase) and extreme weather events (such as flooding and storm) may represent severe risks for energetic infrastructure vulnerability, energy demand and production, with remarkable social and economic impacts. The purpose of this study is to analyze climate changes, above all changes in some extreme events, for the forthcoming decades over Italy to support the development of national adaptation policies and measures addressing climate change in energy sector. Future projections have been elaborated and analyzed on the basis of the results provided by regional models of ENSEMBLES and Med-CORDEX archives. The results indicate an increasing risk for some severe weather conditions: more days of extremely high temperature in summer over the whole area, a greater occurrence of flooding and storms over coasts during spring and autumn seasons and a more serious wet-snow events over Alpine region in winter.