Learnings

Outcomes

A number of publications have been issued throughout the project:

“A Starting point for physical climate risk assessment and mitigation: future adaptation and planning” examines the current knowledge base of potential climate related impacts across the power sector and serves as a foundation for a standardized and consensus based framework to inform infrastructure investment and deployment

“READi insights: Extreme heat events and impacts to the electric system” evaluates the severity of recent extreme hear events in the context of historical records and climate change data and considers potential future implications of extreme heat for the power system.

“READi insights: Extreme cold events and impacts to the electric power system” evaluates the severity of recent extreme cold events in the context of historical records and climate change data and considers potential future implications of extreme cold events for the power system.

“Costs and benefits of proactive climate adaptation in the electric sector” examines how proactively implementing adaptation strategies is expected to create a more resilient power system, avoid damages and repair costs and reduce negative impacts to society.

Physical Climate Data 101 is a resource for building climate literacy across the electric power industry and a tool for level-setting key concepts and terminology among climate experts. It provides access to high-quality, technically rigorous training designed to facilitate more productive and collaborative future conversations around climate risk assessment.

Literature review: Climate vulnerability considerations for the power sector: Transmission and Distribution Assets summarises known research on vulnerabilities and identifies associated research gaps.

Climate Informed Planning and Adaptation for Power Sector Resilience literature review and gap analysis addresses current practices and research gaps that hinder the inclusion of climate change in power system decision making and provides approaches for valuing and prioritizing resilience investments in a cost benefit framework and identifies and analyses metrics across all these spaces.

Lessons Learnt

Understanding climate risks is only the first step, creating an implementation plan involves buy in from subject matter experts and incorporation into processes and procedures. Communication and collaboration is key to building more resilient infrastructure.