An updated investigation about climate-change hazards that might impact electric infrastructures

Climate change will affect all types of infrastructure, including energy system. Rising temperatures, increased flood risk and other potential hazards will threaten the reliable and efficient energy supply with potentially large economic and social impacts. To strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards for the Italian electric sector, several adaptation and mitigation actions are to be implemented. In order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts and vulnerabilities, some updated climate change scenarios have been elaborated over Italy on the basis of high-resolution climate models provided by the EU-funded Project Euro-CORDEX with horizontal resolution of 0.11°(~ 12 km) under the Representative Concentration Pathway RCP 8.5. The climate change scenarios have been characterized at seasonal scale, by comparing the current climate (1971–2000) with projections at short (FUT1=2021-2050), medium (2041–2070) and long (FUT2=2071-2100) terms. Without mitigation actions, the more significant results highlight a warming of about 2°C in the next decades, 3°C in the mid of the century, and more than 5°C in the last thirty-years period. Moreover a precipitation decrease is expected, with significant reduction in the summer ranging in between 10 and 20 % in the first half of the century, until 50 % at the end of it. Hot days and coastal floods show the most dramatic rise, but the risks of inland flooding will depend on both the season and the Italian region. Wet-snow events are projected to decrease considerably in the areas nowadays affected by these phenomena, whereas they are likely to increase significantly over Alps, kept free of wet-snow until now. Larger uncertainties characterize the Central and Northern Apennines where the signal is almost absent and no useful information can be inferred for these areas.