diff --git a/doc/release_notes.rst b/doc/release_notes.rst
index d7931f0e..06da9dde 100644
--- a/doc/release_notes.rst
+++ b/doc/release_notes.rst
@@ -185,6 +185,8 @@ PyPSA-Eur 0.8.1 (27th July 2023)
   (https://github.com/PyPSA/pypsa-eur/pull/672)
 
 
+* Addressed deprecation warnings for ``pandas=2.0``. ``pandas=2.0`` is now minimum requirement.
+
 PyPSA-Eur 0.8.0 (18th March 2023)
 =================================
 
diff --git a/scripts/build_electricity_demand.py b/scripts/build_electricity_demand.py
index f7b6cddd..d7d9927d 100755
--- a/scripts/build_electricity_demand.py
+++ b/scripts/build_electricity_demand.py
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ def load_timeseries(fn, years, countries, powerstatistics=True):
         return s[: -len(pattern)]
 
     return (
-        pd.read_csv(fn, index_col=0, parse_dates=[0])
+        pd.read_csv(fn, index_col=0, parse_dates=[0], date_format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")
         .tz_localize(None)
         .filter(like=pattern)
         .rename(columns=rename)