The impact of climate change on power demand in Japan is a matter of concern for the Japanese authorities and power companies as it may have consequences on the power grid. We trained random forest models against daily power data in ten Japanese regions and for different types of power generation to project changes in future power production and its carbon intensity. To do so, we used twelve predictors: six climate variables, five variables accounting for human exposure to climate, and one variable for the level of human activities. We then used the models trained from the present-day period to estimate the future power demand, carbon intensity, and pertaining CO2 emissions over the period 2020-2100 under three SSPs scenarios (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways: SSP126, SSP370, and SSP585). The impact of climate change on CO2 emissions via power generation shows seasonal and regional disparities. In cold regions, a decrease in power demand during winter under future warming leads to an overall decrease in power demand over the year. In contrast, the decrease in winter power demand in hot regions can be overcompensated by an increase in summer power demand because of more frequent hot days, leading to an overall annual increase. From our regional models, the power demand should increase the most in most Japanese regions in May, June, September, and October and not in the middle of summer, as has been found in older studies. Such an increase could result in regular power outages during those months if not considered, as the power grid could be particularly tense. Overall, we observed that power demand in regions with extreme climates is more sensitive to global warming than in temperate regions. The impact of climate change on power demand induces a net annual decrease in CO2 emissions in all regions except for Okinawa, in which power demand strongly increases during the summer, resulting in a net annual increase in CO2 emissions. However, climate change's impact on carbon intensity may reverse the trend in some regions (Shikoku, Tohoku). We also assessed the relative impacts of socioeconomic factors such as population, GDP, and environmental policies on CO2 emissions. When combined with these factors, we found that the climate change effect is more important than when considered individually and significantly impacts total CO2 emissions under SSP585.

The hotter the climate is, the higher the demand for cooling is, leading to more electricity consumption and CO2 emissions. To understand the effect of future regional warming on the electricity demand and CO2 emissions in the Arabian Peninsula region, we selected a representative country, Qatar, and developed a model that relates daily electricity demand with temperature. By combining this model with temperature projections from of 1 23 the CMIP6 database (bias adjusted and statistically downscaled), as well as GDP and population projections from four SSP scenarios, we calculated Qatar’s demand for electricity until the end of the century. We found an average sensitivity of 1.7 GWh/°C for the electricity demand, equivalent to 0.4 MtCO2/°C for CO2 emissions. The electricity demand is projected to increase by 5 to 35% due to warming alone at the end of this century. Under SSP1, the warming-induced CO2 emissions could be offset by improvements of carbon intensity. Under SSP5, assuming no improvement of carbon intensity, future warming could add 20 to 35% of CO2 emissions per year by the end of the century, with half of the electricity demand related to extremely hot days becoming more frequent in the future. Our findings suggest that it is important to consider additional CO2 emissions arising from future warming in future temperature projections.

As the COVID-19 virus spread over the world, governments restricted mobility to slow transmission. Public health measures had different intensities across European countries but all had significant impact on people’s daily lives and economic activities, causing a drop of CO2 emissions of about 10% for the whole year 2020. Here, we analyze changes in natural gas use in the industry and built environment sectors during the first half of year 2020 with daily gas flows data from pipeline and storage facilities in Europe. We find that reductions of industrial gas use reflect decreases in industrial production across most countries. Surprisingly, natural gas use in buildings also decreased despite most people being confined at home and cold spells in March 2020. Those reductions that we attribute to the impacts of COVID-19 remain of comparable magnitude to previous variations induced by cold or warm climate anomalies in the cold season. We conclude that climate variations played a larger role than COVID-19 induced stay-home orders in natural gas consumption across Europe.