Modern-day Ciudad Mante, Mexico, could help Tampa, Florida, plan for shifting water and electricity demands due to climate change, according to an international team of researchers. Led by Renee Obringer, assistant professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State, the researchers used utilities data and climate analogs — contemporary cities with climates close to what other cities are predicted to experience in the future — to assess how climate change may impact residential water and electricity use across 46 cities in the United States.
Their computationally efficient model projected strong regional differences for future water and electricity demand, with some cities possibly experiencing increases in summer water and electricity demand of up to 15% and 20%, respectively, because of climate change. The researchers published their findings, which could inform how cities learn from each other in planning for climate change mitigation, in the journal One Earth.
“We’re trying to understand how future climate change scenarios might impact water-electricity demand in U.S. cities,” Obringer said. “What do these changes actually show in terms of how our bulk demand is changing, and how do we bridge the gap between research data and practice to help management agencies plan resilience to future change and better serve residents?”
Read more at Penn State
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