Proactive Adaption to Resilient Infrastructure

Each year, extreme weather events such as drought, wildfires, floods, and severe storms cause billions of dollars of damage and lost productivity to infrastructure systems, residences, and businesses. The power system is one of many critical infrastructure sectors impacted by these disasters. 

Historically, energy companies have responded to weather-related damage to restore power as quickly as possible, rapidly deploying large, skilled crews to replace severely damaged components. This can incur significant costs. 

EPRI’s extensive literature review demonstrates that planning for future climate conditions and acting proactively to implement adaptation strategies may significantly reduce the costs incurred by energy providers for response, repair, and recovery. A Fant et al. study showed acting proactively could generate a 50% savings over the long run. A Canadian Climate Institute study said 80% of transmission and distribution system damage costs could be avoided with proactive adaptation. There is general agreement these estimates are likely conservative, as they do not account for a future-focused value of resilience.

What exactly is proactive adaptation? It’s a strategy to prevent future damage rather than reacting only after damage has occurred. It entails a forward-looking mindset to develop risk-informed investment decisions today. This can include evolving design criteria, based on future climate projections, to reflect the range of conditions that an asset could be exposed to over its expected lifecycle.

Power system owners, operators, and regulators will make countless decisions about how to develop the grid in the coming decade as society moves towards a decarbonized economy. The question is how best to incorporate considerations for withstanding near-term extreme weather and the long-term impacts of a changing climate in that decision-making? Recognizing the value of thoughtful investment in resilience, energy companies continually seek strong models to assess risk and inform decisions. EPRI research has found that models could benefit from including:

• Extreme weather potential
• Long-term climate change  
• Mitigation for weather-related risks 
• Designing new infrastructure with less vulnerability to weather and climate
• The value of resilience to customers and communities
• Guidance to help prioritize decision-making 
• More advanced cost/benefit tools

EPRI has been involved in resiliency research for more than a decade. Last year, we launched, the Climate Resilience and Adaptation Initiative (Climate READi), focused on the development of a common framework to assess exposure and vulnerability to a wide variety of weather variables. When complete in 2025, the framework will embody one of the most comprehensive, integrated approaches to physical climate risk assessment for the power industry. 

Having practitioners involved in the work is crucial, as is peer-to-peer exchanges with EPRI scientists and other experts around the world. Participating in Climate READi are 38 organizations around the globe that include energy providers, system operators and regional transmission operators, as well as an advisory group composed of climate scientists, regulators, policymakers, national labs, universities, insurers, environmental non-profits, and government agencies. 

Energy companies are proactively planning for an increase in extreme weather, and want to become more capable in understanding hyper-local weather hazards. The development of technical resources and tools through the Climate READi initiative will help energy companies better characterize those local climate threats. They will be better able to prioritize risk mitigation actions and investments in consideration of their unique systems, geographies, and the many factors power companies must balance.

With increased electrification to meet decarbonization goals, the future value of resiliency is only going to increase. Energy customers depend on reliable power, and communities need it to sustain critical services. Proactive adaptation can be a financially prudent approach for building infrastructure systems that last well into the future.