Abstract:
Climate change and rising temperatures represent a grave threat to modern civilization, with many of the key infrastructures across the world at risk. The energy sector is highly susceptible to anthropogenic warming, and many of its subsectors would be impacted. This risk is severe for developing countries with an already weak grid. In this study, we estimate the impacts of climate change on the power sector of a developing country, and we have chosen Pakistan as a case study. We use climate projections from selected climate models to estimate the impact on demand, transmission, and generation in the country. An ANN-based approach utilizing historical demand patterns is used to estimate the impact on consumer demand. Under the worst-case scenario, most regions in the country would experience a drastic increase in demand. Similarly, the impact on transmission, which was found by using the thermal model of transmission lines, shows that transmission line capacity could be decreased by as much as 23.34% for some transmission lines. Thermal and solar PV power in the country is compared to their resilience to rising temperatures. The results show that thermal power would face far greater decreases in generation capacity than solar power. Without implementing more efficient technologies, demand-side management programs, or the upgrading of transmission infrastructure, CC impacts may overwhelm Pakistan's already weak grid system.
