Climate Exchange

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nergy

therefore important to project climate change impacts

on temperature and precipitation extremes, both to

adapt current facilities and design new ones. New

methodologies have to be developed, and EDF Research

and Development has proposed and compared differ-

ent ways to derive future extreme temperature levels

within the next decades or at the end of the century.

The future evolutions of water availability and tempera-

ture are equally crucial and such studies are absolutely

necessary. Up to now, one of the main difficulties has

lain in the access to climate simulation results suitable

for such local impact studies involving different mete-

orological parameters. Both spatial and temporal scales

often do not match.

Development of climate services

Climate services are currently under development

and are prone to provide the needed climatic informa-

tion. The requirements mainly concern the facilitation

of access to climate science results, both in terms of

information and of datasets. Information should

include synthetic analyses of climate models’ capabili-

ties to represent the needed parameters, a selection of

a minimal model ensemble to conduct relevant impact

studies and guidance for the use of such results. On

the other hand, it could be useful to download climate

simulation results (both raw data and bias-corrected

in the coming years. The energy sector generally uses state-of-the-

art numerical weather prediction models, for instance those from

ECMWF, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Météo-

France or the UK Met Office among others. But while much progress

has been made in short-term and medium-term weather forecasts,

the need for longer-term forecasts and climate projections have only

been partly addressed.

Long-range forecasts (seasonal to annual and even decadal) have

indeed become ever more important to the (physical and finan-

cial) optimization of the systems, especially for temperature and

precipitation, which drive demand and hydropower production. The

development of accurate and skilful monthly and seasonal forecast-

ing systems in the last decade has begun to provide solutions and

helped increase the reliability in energy production and demand

forecasts.

However, this type of information, essentially probabilis-

tic, is far from trivial for the users, and requires the development of

partnerships or organized services in order to ensure a scientifically

correct use, notwithstanding its usefulness for the operational proc-

esses at stake. The operational use of such information can then be

achieved only if close collaboration is established between providers

and users of the data.

Long-term investment strategy and planning are important for

the energy sector as well, with the scope between 10 and 50-60

years ahead. Currently running facilities are challenged by unprece-

dented extreme events like summer heat waves and droughts. There

is now growing presumption that the occurrence of such events will

increase with anthropogenically-induced climate evolutions. It is

EDF accompanies local authorities in the development of their territory, with projects such as Bordeaux’s streetcars