Are you interested in developing weather-resilient energy systems that are robust against climate impacts, energy droughts, and aligned with climate mitigation targets? Do you enjoy working on interdisciplinary research that bridges energy modelling with climate science, hydrology, risk analysis, and integrated assessment? Join us as a PhD candidate.
Your jobThe rapid decarbonisation of the energy system requires the large-scale expansion of renewable energy sources for electricity generation, coupled with the electrification of end-use sectors such as space heating and cooling. It is projected that by 2050, approximately 80% of the global electricity supply will come from variable renewable energy (VRE) sources like wind, solar, and hydropower to meet the 1.5–2°C Paris Agreement target. However, the increasing reliance on VRE in decarbonised energy systems exposes both supply and demand to greater vulnerability from variable and uncertain weather conditions.
One emerging challenge threatening the reliability and security of energy supply is energy droughts—extended periods of energy shortfall or low production, analogous to hydrological droughts. These events are driven by prolonged periods of low weather-resource availability, such as calm wind conditions or insufficient water in hydro reservoirs or rivers. They may also be triggered by other weather extremes, such as storms forcing wind turbines offline or heatwaves and droughts reducing cooling water availability for thermal power generation. Of particular concern are compound energy droughts, where multiple stressors occur simultaneously. A well-known example is Dunkelflaute (or "dark doldrums"), which often coincides with high energy demand during cold winter spells. As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, future energy transition pathways must be designed to anticipate and withstand these risks.
This PhD project focuses on designing climate- and energy drought-resilient decarbonised energy systems, integrating both climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. The project aims to improve the spatiotemporal representation of weather and hydrological extremes, interannual weather variability, and long-term climate change impacts in energy system modelling. While the interconnected European energy system will serve as a case study, the developed methodology is intended to be scalable and applicable to other global regions. The results will also inform the integration of energy drought-related risks into global integrated assessment models.
To achieve these goals, the project combines high-resolution, open-access climate projection ensembles with statistical and machine learning-based resampling techniques (e.g., k-nearest neighbours) to simulate weather-dependent energy supply and demand. Drawing on insights from hydrology and quantitative risk management, the project will also develop improved methods to identify energy droughts and detect "worst-case" weather years for energy security. These methods will be applied to map global energy drought risks, using scenario databases of renewable energy installations from global integrated assessment models.
The identified worst-case weather years will then be integrated into state-of-the-art, detailed energy system models (e.g., PLEXOS, PyPSA) to support more robust planning of future decarbonised systems and to stress test their operational reliability. This can be further embedded within a stochastic or robust optimisation framework to enhance planning decisions under uncertainty.
An integral part of this project is the exploration of synergies between virtual storage (arising from spatiotemporal complementarity), conventional grid integration options (e.g., storage, interconnectors, firm low-carbon generation), and emerging renewable technologies (e.g., floating offshore wind, floating PV, and green hydrogen) in mitigating and managing energy droughts.
Finally, the project will provide evidence-based recommendations on modelling practices and implementable policy options for energy drought identification, management, and the development of climate- and drought-resilient energy systems.
In practice, your tasks and responsibilities are the following:
- Analysing recent developments in the identification and characterisation of (energy) droughts across the energy field and related domains (climate science, hydrology, and risk management), including threshold-based and index-based approaches, the sequent-peak algorithm, extreme value analysis, and multivariate copulas. Based on this, you will develop an improved method to map global energy drought risk and storage requirements.
- Evaluating the global potential of conventional and emerging renewable energy technologies (e.g., floating offshore wind, floating PV), and improving their representation in energy system models and integrated assessment models.
- Identifying the most critical weather years for energy security under both current policy and Paris-aligned climate scenarios for key global regions, leveraging both high-resolution, open-access climate projection ensembles and statistical/machine learning-based resampling techniques.
- Integrating “worst-case” weather years into detailed energy system models to design climate- and energy drought-resilient energy portfolios and decarbonisation pathways for the interconnected European energy system toward 2050. You will explore the synergy between virtual storage (from technological and spatial complementarity) and hydrogen storage, alongside conventional grid integration strategies, to mitigate and manage energy droughts.
- Publishing your research findings in peer-reviewed academic journals and contributing to Open Science by developing open-access databases derived from your research. You are expected to actively participate in a series of doctoral workshops and present your work at international conferences.
- Contributing to education by teaching in one of our Bachelor’s or Master’s programmes (approximately 10% of your time).