Climate change: crisis and adaptations in the electricity sector

The world has been working to decarbonize the energy sector with the aim of minimizing the effects of global warming resulting from CO2 emissions. Despite all this effort, the increase in temperature is already a reality and one of the main consequences is the change in the regime of climatic variables such as rain, winds and temperature.

In the case of the Brazilian electricity sector, the change in the location of rainfall is already beginning to directly affect energy generation due to the country's essentially water matrix. This change considered a climate threat brings disturbances to a planned system that continues to consider a history of flows that no longer occurs.

The search for greater resilience has been a topic of research in several areas, including the health threat that the world is experiencing. A systematized way of attacking the problem of an extreme event that may perpetuate itself as a new normal involves accepting that the threat exists, quantifying it and adopting policies and measures to resist or adapt to the new condition. Normally, resisting can represent high costs and the preference is usually for adaptation.

Since 2011, the Long Term Average (MLT) in the southeast region has not exceeded 100%, which causes a continuous decrease in the level of our reservoirs. The first action of those responsible for the electricity sector should be to believe and quantify the future reduction in precipitation and then seek actions to make the system more resilient.

In 2014, work coordinated by APINE (ANEEL Strategic R&D 10) was completed, showing that physical guarantees would suffer losses of up to 25 % in 2050. This work was carried out using data from the global climate model (MCG) from the Hardley Center of England with a discretization made for South America using INPE's ETA regional model.

Industry and government agents did not want to listen and said that global models were not reliable. Other studies followed, such as the MME META project sponsored by the World Bank in 2018 and recently specific work on the Paraná Basin sponsored by the UNDP together with the MME. These studies included other MGBs such as the Japanese MIROC, the English HadGEN2-ES and the Canadian CanESM2, all regionalized by ETA.

These GCMs are part of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in the AR5 report, whose functions are to simulate climate variables across the entire surface of the planet, calculating projections of these variables until 2100.

The results confirm the predictions made in 2014, that is, that the level of precipitation in the North and Northeast regions tends to decrease and in the South region it tends to increase, mainly due to the greater frequency of El Niño, which represents the increase in temperature in the tropical region of the ocean. Pacific.

In the Southeast region there is also a downward trend, but the forecast is more difficult due to the effect of the ZCAS. Another point that can be observed in the issue of seasonalization is the greater concentration of rain, reducing the wet period and increasing the dry period, making it difficult to regulate the rivers. As it is difficult to build large reservoirs for environmental reasons, the decision to use hydroelectric plants to stabilize and increase supply is increasingly compromised.

In the case of the Paraná basin, the English model in the scenario of a temperature increase of 4^O C in 2100 (RCP 8.5) already points to a structural flow shortage of the order of 40% for 2050. With the indication of these trends in climate variables pointed out not only by a single GCM, greater commitment would be necessary to deal with this threat.

Seeking combined solutions, including with other agents that also make use of water resources, becomes imperative. Only now, ANA has called on agents, associations, the ONS, the MME, the MDR, to seek combined solutions to the current water scarcity in the Paraná basin.

The current supply situation explained in the current red flag (level 2) right at the end of the rainy season denotes a very critical situation signaling possible rationing this year or next depending only on the behavior of the load. As a strategy to minimize energy supply problems, the search for diversification of the national and mainly regional energy matrix becomes imperative to make the electrical energy system less fragile.

Although renewables are the solution to the emission of greenhouse gases, they bring intermittency, making it difficult for the electrical system to operate. Therefore, dispatchable plants and storage must be present in quantities that vary depending on the degree of penetration and regime of renewable sources.

Although storage technologies are advancing, low-emission thermal plants such as natural gas cannot be dispensed with in this energy transition towards “zero carbon”. A major cost and benefit analysis must be carried out with various government and society entities that transcend the electricity sector to price the restrictions that exist in the operation of the system.

It is in this coordination that the Brazilian government has failed, despite all its centralizing bias. There are several reforms underway in congress where the interests of economic groups try to prevent good projects of national and regional interest in whole or in part.

The Gas Law is an example that came very late and we have probably already missed the window of opportunity for natural gas just as we missed the window for oil. There are interesting projects under discussion in the Brazilian congress to improve the democratization of resources, such as PL 5829/20, or PL da GD, which has seen a strong debate initiated by ANEEL in 2019 to reformulate REN 482/12.

This PL consolidates important advances such as the dispersion of investment in generation, contribution to the energy supply, contribution to the low carbon economy, democratization of the actions of consumers who seek greater knowledge about the energy they consume, becoming a responsible party regarding its consumption.

The responsibility for managing the sector gradually becomes decentralized and regionalized, contributing to greater resilience of the system. With greater consumer commitment, demand response begins to gain greater space in the management of energy resources, putting an end to the idea of low consumer elasticity.

The benefits of DG exceed the distributors' costs, especially at this time of energy crisis with the red flag already raised. The big issue is the remuneration of the traditional distribution monopoly, which cannot be neglected, but also cannot be placed as a barrier to the evolution of this source.

As we will not have a shortage of sun and wind, associations with natural gas initially and storage systems such as batteries, reversible plants, hydrogen and other technologies in a second moment seem to be the path that is being drawn mainly because Brazil has significant potential for both primary sources.

In the case of solar generation, it would be interesting for the government to encourage the development of technologies for the enrichment of silicon, green hydrogen and lithium/sodium for batteries, etc.

The external dependence on these technologies appears to be catastrophic, as occurred with the health crisis we are experiencing where, despite all of Brazil's historical tradition in vaccines, we ended up dependent on basic external inputs for their production.

We cannot miss the renewables window and the government must encourage strategic investments in DG and the entire associated production chain. There is still time to accept climate change and establish actions to mitigate its impacts, but we cannot continue with the traditional vision of the sector as reality is already imposing itself.