As We Spend Billions to Decarbonize Energy Systems, We Can’t Forget Resilience

Roadmaps to Net Zero all point to much more electrification of industry, commercial, and transportation infrastructure. ?While we look to decarbonize through electrification, the systems that remain online and new systems will need to be able play both roles of decarbonization and resilience. Following are some recommendations that allow us to do just that.

?Our Current State

Extreme weather patterns are baked in. The volume of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already being attributed to more extreme weather patterns. A recent article in Nature finds that $143 Billion per year of costs of extreme weather are attributable to climate change[1]. Our role in the energy industry is to take the necessary steps to minimize additional carbon into the atmosphere, and to also prepare our infrastructure for the new normal of extreme weather.

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With a growing number of extreme weather events, power outages are becoming more common[2]. Over the past two decades, major power outages have occurred in 90% of extreme weather events[3]. In the United States alone, we have seen a significant increase in billion-dollar disasters, from a variety of weather events, ranging from floods to wildfires to drought[4].

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There are a variety of risks that need be discussed regarding the build-out and operation of a decarbonized power system. Two key areas of concern for the power industry are water availability for power generation and the susceptibility of our transmission and distribution grid to extreme weather.

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Power Generation Risk

In the latest Annual Energy Outlook from DOE EIA[5], it is anticipated that by the year 2050, 37% of the energy system will still be thermo-electric power plants. In an environment where we anticipate extreme heat and greater water stress, these plants, whether water or air cooled, will face derating of their capacity factor, and potentially complete shutdown. Thermal power plants and hydropower are at a significant disadvantage in a warming planet[6].

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Hydropower is the world’s largest resource of renewable energy, it is at risk in a variety of regions including Brazil, North America, China and India. In South America, water availability for hydropower plants has decreased due to drought conditions in Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador, requiring them to import power from neighboring countries[7]. The less reliable hydropower systems are forcing these countries to shift to less efficient and carbon-based oil fired and natural gas plants. Also, these conditions are creating pressure for more rapid deployment of solar and wind resources. This may provide a significant benefit to decarbonization but may impact overall system reliability and resilience.

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Transmission and Distribution Risk

Transmission and distribution systems are also susceptible to extreme weather. Extreme weather results in line loss, changes in transfer capacity and other physical damage. T&D above ground tends to be more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions – high speed winds, wildfires, floods, and landslides[8]. Further, high ambient temperatures significantly reduce the efficiency of power lines and see increase line loss. The result is greater power having to be produced to serve customers. This requires increased power production, which may result in higher emissions if coming from carbon-based plants. Further, it requires the build out of larger power generation systems to make up for this line loss. This results in greater resource consumption and more carbon pollution and environmental impact in the sourcing and manufacturing of these additional resources. Mining more resources and expanding the footprint of plants may face significant resistance by communities. This is a greater issue if the expansion of new energy resources requires significant water uptake that otherwise would be used by the community, agriculture, and industry.

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Decarbonization and Resilience

?As we deploy new energy solutions, the focus needs to be on decarbonization and resilience. Much of the focus has been on decarbonizing our energy system with a significant investment push to net-zero by 2050. Less focus has been placed on resilience. Resilience is the ability to anticipate, absorb, accommodate, and recover from the effects of potentially hazardous events tied to climate change[9].

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Determining what a resilient system looks like and how to build it is tricky. The key issue is that it can be difficult to build resilience systems if there is uncertainty as to the timing and severity of extreme weather events. This uncertainty can lead to indecision. Other investment priorities that are better known may get priority.

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To ensure we are building resilient systems, we must better understand extreme weather conditions in the near, mid, and long-term. To improve our understanding of future risk, work has been done by downscaling climate models to specific regions and in some cases localities, that provide risk forecasts for infrastructure[10]. The power industry must not assume weather patterns of the past will be weather patterns in the future. Informing power system modeling with climate data will provide better insight into how these new systems must be engineered, built, and operated to deal with extreme weather.

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Recommendations for resilient power systems

The following are a set of recommendations to policy makers and regulators that may result in greater power system resilience. Some of these recommended actions are underway by system planners, but it is not a wide-scale or common industry practice. Some key recommendations include:

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·???????? Water availability and extreme heat will have a significant negative impact on future power operations.[11] Policies that can provide incentives that place a higher value on technologies that are not freshwater dependent, such as geothermal, and long duration energy storage, i.e. pit thermal energy storage. For example, like tax credits based on carbon intensity, tax credit size could be dependent on freshwater intensity. The lower the freshwater intensity, the higher the tax credit

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·???????? Most power system planning uses historical weather data, projecting past weather data into the future. This is not an accurate representation and results in projects being deployed that are at greater risk for extreme weather events. Public utility commissions conducting resource planning should consider climate data for future infrastructure planning, as well as require utilities and power system developers to do the same.[12] During this resource planning create long-term scenarios highlighting possible implications of extreme weather events. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) just came out with a tool that simulates future energy-climate impacts[13].

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·???????? At present system planning looks at the value of reliability excluding consideration of resilience. Reliability is focused on keeping the power on the greatest percentage of time possible. Regulators should also account for the likelihood and impact of black sky events, resulting in a grid that is appropriately hardened for extreme weather conditions. In addition, regulators should implement system performance standards tied to grid resilience and reliability to provide impetus of utilities, plant/system owners to develop more robust power infrastructure[14].

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·???????? Grid hardening requirements are lacking. Policy makers should provide incentives to invest in smart grid technologies that provide greater visibility into grid activity and flexibility of grid operations. Further, they should provide incentives and cost allocation for grid hardening technology deployment. DOE’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) is funding a portion of this effort via the Grid Resilience Innovation Partnerships, but the $3 billion is not nearly enough.

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·???????? Communication and coordination are lacking across power system stakeholders. Policy makers and regulators should institutionalize responsibilities and roles, thereby improving coordination and communication. This could include providing all stakeholders with a clear set of obligations to prevent threats and react in extreme weather circumstances.

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[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888 1#:~:text=Extreme%20Event%20Attribution%20(EEA)%20is,events%20that%20have%20indeed%20occurred.

[2] https://www.iea.org/reports/power-systems-in-transition/climate-resilience?utm_content=bufferb2f83&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin-Birol&utm_campaign=buffer

[3] Major power outages include at least 50,000 customers.

[4] https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/time-series

[5] https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=67-AEO2023&cases=ref2023&sourcekey=0

[6] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abd4a8/meta

[7] https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/worst-brazil-drought-20-years-up-pressure-power-grid-official-2021-05-10/

[8] https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/200771560790885170/pdf/Stronger-Power-Improving-Power-Sector-Resilience-to-Natural-Hazards.pdf .

[9] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/SREX-Chap1_FINAL-1.pdf

[10] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy23osti/84152.pdf

[11] https://www.nrel.gov/water/climate-water-risk.html

[12] https://rmi.org/the-untapped-potential-of-public-utility-commissions/#:~:text=In%20response%2C%20many%20states%20are,line%20with%20state%20climate%20goals .

[13] https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2024/nrel-unveils-groundbreaking-generative-machine-learning-model-to-simulate-future-energy-climate-impacts.html

[14]https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1367499#:~:text=Grid%20resilience%20metrics%20should%20be,and%20planning%20and%20investment%20efforts .