Disentangling the Evolving Effects of Climate Change and Technology Diffusion on Building Electricity Demand

Abstract Climate change and technology diffusion will interact to drive future electricity demand of buildings. That interaction will evolve over time based on rates of climate change and technology diffusion, a phenomenon not previously studied but crucial for planning reliable power systems. We estimate electricity demand from residential and commercial buildings under climate change and/or technology diffusion across 111 cities in the United States through 2060. Our framework drives 159,840 machine learning models of building electricity demand with 40 climate realizations and 18 technology diffusion pathways of air source heat pumps and insulation. We find interactions between climate change and technology diffusion generate peak load trajectories that diverge substantially from those driven by either factor alone, with patterns differing between hot and cold grid regions. In cold regions, climate change and technology diffusion drive roughly up to 3 and 20 times larger peak demand growth than climate change alone by 2040 and 2060, respectively. Conversely, in hot regions, technology diffusion counteracts climate-change-driven peak demand growth. Across regions, climate-change-induced warming reduces or eliminates a shift towards winer peaking driven by technology diffusion. Via uncertainty partitioning, we find climate-related uncertainty dominates near-term peak demand uncertainty, while technology-diffusion-related uncertainty grows to contribute 10-60% of uncertainty by 2060. Our results highlight the importance of capturing interactions between climate change and technology diffusion over time for resilient power‑system design.