A modeling approach for investigating climate change impacts on renewable energy utilization

In this study, an integrated community‐scale energy model (ICEM) was developed for supporting renewable energy management (REM) systems planning with the consideration of changing climatic conditions. Through quantitatively reflecting interactive relationships among various renewable energy resources under climate change, not only the impacts of climate change on each individual renewable energy but also the combined effects on power‐generation sector from renewable energy resources could be incorporated within a general modeling framework. Also, discrete probability levels associated with various climate change impacts on the REM system could be generated. Moreover, the ICEM could facilitate capacity–expansion planning for energy‐production facilities within a multi‐period and multi‐option context in order to reduce energy‐shortage risks under a number of climate change scenarios. The generated solutions can be used for examining various decision options that are associated with different probability levels when availabilities of renewable energy resources are affected by the changing climatic conditions. A series of probability levels of hydropower‐, wind‐ and solar‐energy availabilities can be integrated into the optimization process. The developed method has been applied to a case of long‐term REM planning for three communities. The generated solutions can provide desired energy resource/service allocation and capacity–expansion plans with a minimized system cost, a maximized system reliability and a maximized energy security. Tradeoffs between system costs, renewable energy availabilities and energy‐shortage risks can also be tackled with the consideration of climate change, which would have both positive and negative impacts on the system cost, energy supply and greenhouse‐gas emission. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.