Temperatures under scenarios of future climate change are projected to increase considerably over the coming century in Ireland. The purpose of this analysis is to explore the likely regional energy demand response to climate change. Specially, the focus is on climate sensitive energy demand by residential sector in the Greater Dublin region (Dublin City, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Fingal, Kildare, Louth, Meath, Wicklow).Based on approximately 50 years of daily temperature data(1960-2006), 12-year daily electricity consumption data (1994-2005) and 16-year daily gas usage date (1989-2006), the historical climate sensitivity of energy demand and the present relationships between temperature and energy consumption are derived for the Greater Dublin region in the first step. The results show that there is a strong inverse relationship between daily energy consumption and temperature in Greater Dublin region. In the winter time, there is a significant heating load with the lower temperatures. Conversely in the summer, demand tends to be lower in Greater Dublin. When controlling for socio-economic factors, climate variables have significant explanatory power in describing historic changes in residential energy demand.In the second step, the potential future energy demand responses to the scenarios of climate change is assessed using the linear regression model developed in the first step. Downscaling of Global Climate Models is used to derive future climate scenarios for the region on the basis of local climatological data. The results indicate that a range of scenarios may noticeably decrease autumn and winter heating energy consumption in the Greater Dublin region. For example, the scenarios for 2030 and 2080 project to decrease residential energy demand during the winter months by 15% and 23%, respectively, relative to the energy demand in 2005. The impact of building insulation standards with climate change was also analyzed. The results show that significant savings on energy demand for space heating can be achieved with the improvement of the thermal properties of building and temperature increasing. This can improve energy performance and reduce environmental emissions from Irish housing.

Keywords:

Climate change, temperature, energy demand, degree day, Ireland