# Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on Power Systems: The Italian Case Study
## 5 Climate Change and Future Italian Power System Scenarios
### Italian Scenarios for Climate Change
In Figure 6, a comparison is made between the generation forecast in the BAU scenario and the NT Italy scenario. It is evident that electricity demand is not met by total generation, as electricity import has not been taken into account. Electricity demand depends not only on macroeconomic conditions and demographic change, but also on the strong development of technologies such as heat pumps (HPs) and electric vehicles (EVs), in addition to energy efficiency measures. Both scenarios forecast an increase in electricity demand. The NT scenario shows higher demand values than the BAU scenario only in 2040. This is due to the fact that the BAU scenario does not foresee energy efficiency measures (in contrast to NT). Figure 6: Comparison between RES and Not RES production with demand, Italy scenarios: (**a**) BAU and (**b**) NT. In terms of the adequacy of a power system, it is crucial to forecast the annual peak power. Figure 7 shows the Italian trend and projection. This projection can be explained by considering that, even if EVs cause a steady electricity demand throughout the year, electric HPs will increase the electricity demand in winter, causing a shift of the peak demand from summer to winter. Therefore, a reversal of the peak demand trend compared with the last decade is possible [36]. Meeting an annual peak demand in winter may complicate the problem of adequacy of the electric system, as winter is when PV energy is least available. Figures 8 and 9 show the expected evolution of the total generation capacity for each technology in the two scenarios [36]. Figure 8: Historical and forecast of the Italian installed capacity per fonts by BAU scenario. Figure 7: Evolution and forecast of the Italian peak yearly demand in GW. It is worthwhile to make a remark on the above figures. Looking at the RES plants, a strong expansion of wind and photovoltaic plants is expected for both the BAU and the NT Italy scenarios. As far as wind installed capacity is concerned, it has already been growing steadily, reaching almost 11 GW in 2019. The BAU and NT Italy scenarios confirm this growth trend, peaking at 19 GW (+78% compared with 2019) and 25 GW (+134% compared with 2019) in 2030 and 2040, respectively [36]. Regarding PV generation, both scenarios forecast a significant growth of PV installed capacity, both at small-scale and utility-scale, due to new incentive mechanisms and decreasing technology costs. In the NT Italy scenario (Figure 9), the largest increase in installed capacity is expected. This scenario forecasts an installed PV capacity of 52 GW in 2030, which is 20 GW more than the BAU scenario, and almost 30 GW more compared with 2019. The NT Italy scenario forecasts that PV generation will increase to 64 GW in 2040 (+243% compared with 2019) [36]. In recent years, a decline in thermoelectric generation capacity has been observed, which can be explained by the closure of a large number of thermoelectric power plants, because of the slowdown in the growth of electricity demand and the sharp increase in generation RES. This change has been reflected in a strong transformation of thermoelectric plants, which have decreased from 76 GW of total installed thermoelectric plants in 2013 to about 62 GW in 2019. This trend will continue in the coming years, slowing down to 55 GW in 2030 for both scenarios. A slight increase of 1 GW in 2040 was projected for the BAU scenario [36]. The highest value of thermoelectric generation capacity, corresponding to 164 GW, will be reached in 2040 for the NT Italy scenario. In particular, the NT Italy scenario shows a stronger growth trend than the BAU scenario, with almost 14 GW (in 2025), 40 GW (in 2030) and 58 GW (in 2040) more, compared with 2019 (+43%, +125% and 183%, respectively, compared with 2018). Conversely, fossil thermoelectric generation is expected to switch to gas in both scenarios (in line with Italian and European decarbonization targets) [36]. After discussing generation capacity, it is worth discussing generation forecasting.