In 2006 the Met Office carried out a scoping study on the impacts of climate change on the UK energy industry. The report was the result of a collaboration between E.ON UK, EDF Energy, National Grid and the Met Office Hadley Centre to scope the impacts of climate change on the UK energy industry.

This Phase 2 project was industry-funded; it involved 11 UK energy companies and was undertaken by the Met Office. It focussed on the priorities identified by the earlier scoping study.

During the project new tools and methods required to understand the impact of climate change on the energy industry were developed and new data resources designed to address gaps in underpinning information were produced.

Objectives

The project has been run as a series of Work Packages (WP). Those WPs relevant to distribution and transmission are described below.

• WP1 Modelling Energy Impacts. Models created to assess impacts of climate change on Electricity Demand, Conductor Performance, Transformer Performance, Cables, Overhead Network, and Wind Power.

• WP2 Guidance for the Energy Industry on the use of the United Kingdom Impacts Programme new scenarios of climate change (UKCIP08). UKCIP08 is planned for released in November 2008.

• WP3 Climate Models and Wind Projections. Investigating methods of including estimated of future wind resource in wind farm viability.

• WP4 Climate Change and Underground Cable Performance. Modelling future soil conditions to increase understanding of the impacts of climate change on cables.

• WP6 Climate change and the Urban Heat Island Effect. Producing information on the urban heat island for use when panning infrastructure in cities.

• WP7 Final reporting and presentation of the results to each company.

• WP8 Predicted climatologies for the UK 2008 – 2018.