Prof. Alberto Troccoli

The energy sector is undergoing a major transformation. This transformation in the energy sector is taking place against a variable and changing climate.  Given the weather-and climate-dependency of both renewable energy and demand (even in the case of large storage uptake), it is important to develop robust climate-based tools to advise energy planners and policy makers.

This talk will describe how the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) European Climatic Energy Mixes (ECEM) project can assist in this energy transformation. ECEM is producing, in close collaboration with prospective users, a proof-of-concept climate service, or demonstrator, whose purpose is to enable the energy industry and policy makers to assess how well different energy supply mixes in Europe will meet demand, over different time horizons (from seasonal to long-term decadal planning), focusing on the role climate has on the mixes.

Energy time series were modelled and computed at country level and daily time step for the whole of Europe. Bias-adjusted Essential Climate Variables from ERA-Interim over a European domain for 1979-2016 produced by ECEM were used to calculate energy variables, namely electricity demand and generation from wind, solar and hydro power. Different approaches were adopted depending on the target variable, and the availability of measured data to calibrate and validate the energy models.

Examples from the C3S ECEM Demonstrator – an interactive and visual tool which allows users to view and explore energy supply and demand profiles for each European country (and for ca 100 clusters) and generation type, as well as climate variables, in map and/or time series format – will be used to illustrate the power of climate services in supporting the energy industry. The C3S ECEM Demonstrator is being developed according to user needs and integrates the energy and climate variables being produced in C3S ECEM on historic, seasonal forecast and climate projection timescales. Data can also be downloaded directly from the Demonstrator.

The presentation will conclude with an outlook for future developments of climate services for the energy sector, and what benefits they could provide to the energy industry and decision makers at different levels.

Biography:

Prof. Alberto Troccoli is a visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Sciences and Managing Director of the World Energy & Meteorology Council. He has about 25 years of experience in several aspects of meteorology and climate and, in the last decade, their applications, particularly to the energy sector. He has worked at several leading institutions such as NASA, ECMWF (UK), the University of Reading (UK) and CSIRO (Australia). He has led a number of projects and capacity building activities, particularly in the area of meteorology and energy. He is currently the leader of the EU H2020 project The Added Value of Seasonal Climate Forecasting for Integrated Risk Management (SECLI-FIRM) project, and of the C3S Energy activity. He served as a leader of the Australian Solar Energy Forecasting System project in collaboration with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Bureau of Meteorology and two Australian Universities, which has produced an operational system run by AEMO. Alberto is the chief editor and an author of four books: Seasonal Climate: Forecasting and Managing Risk (2008), Management of Weather and Climate Risk in the Energy Industry (2009), Weather Matters for Energy (2014), Weather & Climate Services for the Energy Industry (2018). He is the main author of the UN-led Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Energy Sector implementation plan. He attended the May 2015 WMO Congress as an invited expert on energy sector matters and he is regularly invited internationally to give talks on energy and climate. He is the convener of the International Conference Energy & Meteorology (ICEM) series. Alberto holds a PhD in physical oceanography from the University of Edinburgh (UK).