Climate Resilience Dispatch from Resilience Week 2024, Austin, TX

This week marked the 16th running of a conference that was originally focused on control systems and cybersecurity, primarily for academics. Over the years it has grown substantially in terms topics covered, participant types and audience size.

I’m going to reprise my opening remarks below, but first let me introduce the crew of experts for the “Climate Resilience Planning for Utilities” panel, which in the final day in a too early slot, drew a small but rather engaged crowd.

• Charles Doktycz and Ashton Raffety – Argonne National Lab
• Agnetha (Aggie) S. – the American Public Power Association
• Tony Nelson – Marshfield Utilities, Wisconsin

Opening Remarks in 5 Parts

(Somewhat modified for this medium, went something like this)

I. In an opening like this one a well-established norm is to list off the most recent disastrous climate-amplified events. I’ll name a few of the higher impact ones: Beryl, Hermine, Milton, and the unnamed thing – a “cold drop” – that landed in/on Valencia, Spain. All four of these brought prolonged power outages, death, and in several cases, entire substations simply washing away, transformers, switchgear, and all.

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II. Then the speaker would pivot to the humiliating failure of COP29 to reinforce the point that atmospheric and oceanic temps – notwithstanding a full eruption of the super volcano under Yellowstone or global nuclear war – are guaranteed to continue rising for the foreseeable future. Which means impacts are guaranteed to continue worsening.

III. ?What’s happening in adaptation and resilience? Lots of good action, much coming from the national labs and elsewhere, though not nearly up to the ever-expanding task at hand, including:

• Argonne’s Center for Climate Resilience and Decision Science (CCRDS)? and its Climate Risk and Resilience portal (ClimRR)
• EPRI’s Climate Resilience and Adaptation Initiative (READi)
• Idaho National Lab’s Infrastructure Storm Damage Estimate Prediction and Recovery Tool (Storm DEPART)
• And outstanding research, awareness building and outreach by DHS’s Sunny Wescott , Pacific Northwest National Lab’s Rebecca O'Neill , and the National Renewable Energy Lab’s Eliza Hotchkiss

IV.? So there’s lots of studying and even some planning, but what about adaptation or resilience ACTIONS?? Hardening or moving key assets?? Protecting critical function? Some of this is happening in places that have already been slammed, like California, New Orleans and New York/New Jersey. But what about elsewhere? Is a local catastrophe required before enough pain is felt and political will is mustered for significant action can happen?

V. 2 closing provocations for panelists:

1. Have conversations begun within utilities and with their customers and stakeholders related to climate migration? See: On the Move by Abrahm Lustgarten.
2. At NERC’s GridSecCon in October, Sunny Wescott on the big stage noted that every state was experiencing a wildfire at that moment. Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) programs, originated in the Western US (CA, OR, WA, CO, WI, ID) ... do you see them being considered in the Midwest and East yet?

Then the panelists were off to the races sharing their thoughts and describing their organizations' actions to date. We got some good questions from attendees in closing minutes and one, asking how we might know if utilities were doing enough to prepare, prompted me to recommend a formative assessment tool for baselining and gauging progress: the Climate Resilience Maturity Model (CRMM).

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