A preliminary approach to estimate the impact of climate change on electricity demand in Italy

We present a methodology to estimate cooling degree-days, heating degree-days and solar radiation records that are representative of the urbanised areas of the Italian territory. These records have recently been used within a model linking meteorological variables to the Italian aggregated electricity demand (Scapin et al., 2014): it allowed estimating the present-day dependence of the Italian electricity demand on cooling degree-days, heating degree-days and solar radiation. We used four RCM-GCM combinations to get the evolution of Italian cooling degree-days, heating degree-days and solar radiation under A1B climate change scenario. The results give evidence of an increase of cooling degree-days of about 130% and a decreasing of heating degree-days of about 35% across the XXIst century. The global effect is a positive forcing of the electricity demand due both to the stronger increase of CDD with respect to the HDD decrease and to the much higher impact of CDD on electricity demand.