The research activities of the SCENARIOS 2012 project were developed on the assumption that an optimized management of the existing electricity system is indispensable, both in view of the rapid growth of renewable energy sources and in an electricity market context that is increasingly open to other European markets. The results of the most important studies highlighted the critical issues that could arise in the Italian electricity market in the coming years, the consequences that the context of market coupling could have for our country, and the impact on the electrical energy system of a sustained development of efficient technologies in end uses, such as heat pumps for heating in the civil sector.
In order to verify the actual environmental sustainability of the development interventions, the project developed measures and models to assess the interactions between the electricity system and the climate, with particular emphasis on the influence of meteorological variability on daily electricity demand and, through regional climate modeling, on the long-term variability of meteorological quantities that can significantly affect the production and efficiency of the Italian electricity system.