New implications for the impact of extreme weather on systems with a high proportion of renewable energy

Extreme weather events, especially extreme temperature events such as heat waves and extreme cold, often require a large amount of energy reserves and deployment support. Extreme weather and climate events caused by climate change will make the future energy supply and demand present an extremely complicated situation. In early 2021, the extreme blizzard weather in Texas, United States, caused a large area of power and water supply systems to be paralyzed, resulting in several days of water and power cuts for residents, and even some people died of cold and hunger at home. Texas is known as the "energy capital" of the United States because of its oil industry, but residents in the state have been left without reliable electricity for days during the cold wave, leaving them without power and unable to heat their homes. The Wall Street Journal has commented that "Texas's over-reliance on wind energy makes the grid more vulnerable to severe weather." Half of the state's wind turbines froze during the cold wave, causing the wind's share of electricity to drop from 42 percent to 8 percent. Natural gas and coal generation have increased to make up for the shortfall, but this is still not enough to meet soaring electricity demand. According to the Wall Street Journal, subsidies for renewable energy, which politicians from both parties have been promoting for decades, have made the power grid unstable. Coal and nuclear are more heavily regulated than wind, which has led to the closure of uncompetitive coal plants in places like Texas. Over the past decade, coal-fired power plants that have gone out of service in the United States could have provided electricity to about 60 million homes. In addition, many nuclear power plants have been shut down. However, the more dependent the grid is on intermittent renewable energy such as wind and solar, the less stable it is when supply and demand change dramatically, and the Texas grid collapse shows the risks and limitations of renewable energy.

The instability of renewable energy output is another shortcoming of green energy. There is no doubt that the power crisis in Texas provides an important warning for our country's future power supply. In the context of comprehensive carbon reduction, how to avoid the problem of short-term power shortage is one of the key points worth paying attention to. The key to carbon reduction lies in the energy transition, which is to replace the existing fossil energy with clean energy. Under the guidance of the goal of "reaching the peak of carbon and carbon neutrality", China's energy and power industry will be transformed from fossil energy to renewable energy. However, compared with traditional fossil fuels, clean energy sources (such as solar and wind) are often less sustainable during extreme weather events. During heat waves, for example, wind power is almost impossible due to the wide range of quiet wind conditions. During the extremely cold period, the fan may freeze, the solar photovoltaic can not be output, the supply of clean energy will decrease significantly, and there must be a strong energy supply and storage system and network as well as the support of traditional energy reserve emergency supply capacity. The limited time of renewable energy storage is another short board of green energy. Limited by energy storage equipment, the existing energy storage time of renewable energy is only 2-4 hours. But power outages caused by extreme weather, such as the cold snap that caused the Texas blackout, can last up to a week, tend to last longer. Renewable energy storage and pumping can no longer participate in the supply and regulation of electricity when the storage or storage capacity is released within a few hours. If you want to rely on energy storage to form weekly adjustment capacity, you need a powerful energy storage equipment, and the existing 2-4 hours of energy storage time is a qualitative difference.

Third, building a climate resilience system is a governance strategy that remains unchanged and responds to changes

To sum up, in the process of planning and implementing China's carbon neutrality, we should fully consider the climate resilience of energy supply.

First, it is necessary to raise the awareness of the whole society on the importance of building a resilient climate energy supply system, and implement the concept of climate-resilient energy supply redundancy in various actions. It is necessary to strengthen guidance and incorporate the resilient climate energy supply capacity into the security development indicator system as an important indicator for the construction of resilient societies, resilient cities, resilient industries, and resilient sectors. In the context of climate change, the setting of the redundancy amplitude of climate-resilient energy supply should be studied and used as an important redundancy index for building a climate-resilient system. Second, irresistible factors (such as prolonged and frequent extreme weather events) should be taken into account in international negotiations and nationally determined Contributions (NDCS). Third, in the process of building a multi-energy complementary new integrated energy system, we must ensure the synergistic role of coal and electricity, the "ballast stone" of energy supply. Fourth, in the process of green transformation, climate resilience and redundancy protection should be included as a task in collaborative governance work. Traditional energy systems must not be dismantled. Fifth, we need to promote the construction of a smart energy system, promote the digitalization, informatization, and intelligent transformation and upgrading of the entire energy and power industry chain, strengthen the supply-side response capacity, and realize the coordination and interaction of load and storage of the source network. Sixth, it is necessary to study and formulate new mechanisms and systems for risk identification, prediction, early warning and emergency response in the post-epidemic era and the era of carbon peak carbon neutral climate emergency response. Dealing with risk in an uncertain future world as a matter of routine. Do a good job of risk emergency prevention of green energy vulnerability, and effectively respond to possible risks by legalization, institutionalization, systematization and standardization.