The energy system will need to adapt not only to average climate variations but also to increased climate variability, which could pose threats to the reliability and security of energy production and supply systems, with serious social and economic impacts.

To support national adaptation actions and policies to address the impacts of climate change on the national energy sector, this work analyzes variations in extreme weather events expected in Italy, while also considering gradual changes in meteorological variables (particularly, temperature and precipitation).

The results from various high-resolution climate models provided by the European Euro-CORDEX Project (spatial resolution 0.11°, approximately 12 km) were analyzed, taking into account three different radiative forcing scenarios to quantitatively estimate climate hazard under different socio-economic development trajectories: assuming no policies are implemented to reduce current greenhouse gas emission trends (RCP8.5), assuming partial emission reductions (RCP4.5), and assuming very low radiative forcings with the implementation of significant mitigation policies (RCP2.6).

After discarding models with limited performance in reconstructing the current climate compared to reference datasets (E-OBS and MESAN), the multi-model scenarios of climate change were characterized by comparing average values in the reference scenario (1971-2000) with those for the short term (2021-2050), medium term (2041-2070), and long term (2071-2100).