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Temporally compounding energy droughts in European electricity systems with hydropower

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Abstract

As Europe’s renewable energy capacities expand, electricity systems face increased risks of energy droughts—periods of low production coinciding with high demand. We evaluate characteristics of electricity variability due to weather variations by calculating 1,600 years of daily production and demand. Focusing on five European countries—chosen for their energy mix including hydropower—we find that energy droughts result from processes that cause (temporally) compounding impacts in the energy and meteorological system. These can turn what might have been short-term droughts into prolonged high unmet energy demand. For instance, low reservoir inflows in spring quadruple the chance of prolonged energy droughts: reduced snowpack and rainfall lower hydro availability but also dry out subsoils, increasing the chance of heatwaves and therewith extending the energy problems into summer. We identify and quantify three compounding energy/climate conditions and the associated characteristics and risks of multi-year energy droughts, crucial for informing future energy system design.

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Fig. 1: PEDs with daily residual loads above the 97th percentile for the once-in-ten-years-or-less PEDs.
Fig. 2: Representation of the 30-day EDWs occurring once in ten years or less.
Fig. 3: Summer energy droughts preceded by dry springs.
Fig. 4: Winter energy drought preceded by low run-off during reservoir-filling season.
Fig. 5: Low inflow into reservoirs the season after an energy drought.
Fig. 6: The reinforcing cycle of multi-year energy droughts.

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Data availability

All data supporting the findings of this study and required to reproduce the figures are accessible at https://github.com/L-vdM/Temporally-compounding-energy-droughts-figures. The full energy datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12634375 (ref. 56).

Code availability

The code used to select extremes and calculate risk ratios is available via GitHub at https://github.com/L-vdM/energydroughts-Europe.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG), University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    L. van der Most, R. M. J. Benders, P. W. Gerbens-Leenes & R. Bintanja

  2. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), De Bilt, The Netherlands

    L. van der Most, K. van der Wiel & R. Bintanja

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  1. L. van der Most
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Contributions

L.v.d.M., K.v.d.W., R.M.J.B., P.W.G.-L. and R.B. conceived and designed the analysis. L.v.d.M. performed simulations, data analysis and drafted the paper. K.v.d.W., R.M.J.B., P.W.G.-L. and R.B. helped with the interpretation and analysis of the results, reviewed the paper and supervised the work.

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Correspondence to L. van der Most.

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Nature Energy thanks Amarasinghage Tharindu Perera, Patrick A. Ray and Sean Turner for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Notes 1–4 and Figs. 1–17.

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van der Most, L., van der Wiel, K., Benders, R.M.J. et al. Temporally compounding energy droughts in European electricity systems with hydropower. Nat Energy 9, 1474–1484 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01640-5

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