Climate change is a societal issue, and the failure to adapt poses severe consequences to public health, safety and finances.1 The recently released Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, found that increases in the frequency and intensity of climate and weather extremes around the world already have had widespread, pervasive impacts on ecosystems, people, settlements and infrastructure.2 The cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action. If we do not rapidly decrease GHG emissions by midcentury, large parts of our planet will become uninhabitable and 10% of total economic value will be lost.3,4 The electrical grid is critical infrastructure that powers our communities. It is imperative in California and around the world to have a grid that adapts and responds to climate change, both to provide resiliency and reliability, and to achieve the carbon neutrality that will help slow the rate of climate change. Southern California Edison recently completed a detailed climate adaptation vulnerability assessment (CAVA) on assets, operations and services throughout our 50,000-square-mile service area.i The chief conclusions are that, by 2050, wildfires could take out full corridors of transmission, leaving large swaths of customers without service for long periods; critical substations in flood plains could become inundated due to more extreme precipitation events; and the grid could have up to 20% reduced capacity in some areas due to increased extreme temperatures. To meet this new reality, infrastructure must be designed to withstand more intense storm surges and flooding, and new transmission lines must be constructed to bolster regional reliability under more severe wildfire conditions.
PLANNING: Today, electric grid design standards and planning practices used at SCE and throughout the industry are based on historical climate data, underestimating future conditions and associated risks. Future climate states must be incorporated into planning processes to appropriately address chronic and acute climate risks, especially those related to long-lived assets and systems. Additionally, utility planning horizons should be extended from the typical timeframe of 10 years or less to at least 20 years, so investments in the near term can help address climate change risks in the long term.
INVESTMENT: Climate adaptation investments are needed now. No-regrets foundational measures need to be developed and funded in the near term with the understanding that more significant investments will be required in the next 10 to 20 years. The cost to invest now is far less than the cost of inaction and will help hedge against the uncertainty society faces in the future.
PARTNERSHIPS: Significant collaboration among communities, local and regional planning authorities, and governments is required to address the interdependencies of critical infrastructures; perform cross-sector resiliency planning to take care of disadvantaged, climate-vulnerable communities; and minimize societal adaptation costs.
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