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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Hannah BloomfieldORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
In 2021, the energy sector was put at risk by extreme weather in many different ways: North America and Spain suffered heavy winter storms that led to the collapse of the electricity network; California specifically experienced heavy droughts and heatwave conditions, causing the operations of hydropower stations to halt; floods caused substantial damage to energy infrastructure in central Europe, Australia and China throughout the year, and unusual wind drought conditions decreased wind power production in the United Kingdom by almost 40% during summer. The total economic impacts of these extreme weather events are estimated at billions of USD. Here we review and assess in some detail the main extreme weather events that impacted the energy sector in 2021 worldwide, discussing some of the most relevant case studies and the meteorological conditions that led to them. We provide a perspective on their impacts on electricity generation, transmission and consumption, and summarize estimations of economic losses.
Author(s): Anel JA, Perez-Souto C, Bayo-Besteiro S, Prieto-Godino L, Bloomfield HC, Troccoli A, de la Torre L
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Weather Climate and Society
Year: 2024
Volume: 16
Pages: 353–368
Online publication date: 13/02/2024
Acceptance date: 25/01/2024
Date deposited: 16/02/2024
ISSN (print): 1948-8327
ISSN (electronic): 1948-8335
Publisher: American Meteorological Society
URL: https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-23-0115.1
DOI: 10.1175/WCAS-D-23-0115.1
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/ab7s-7x88
Data Access Statement: ERA5 Data analyzed in this study are openly available at https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-complete. The data on water storage were obtained from the California Department of Water Resources web page (https://water.ca.gov/). The electricity price and demand data for Spain were obtained from Red Electrica Espanola (https://www.ree.es). The wind power generation data for the U.K. is property of IberdrolaSA, and cannot be redistributed. The coal carbon prices were obtained from tradingeconomics.com, and cannot be redistributed.
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