Power Companies Get a Guide to Making the Grid Withstand Climate Impacts
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
As supercharged storms and wildfires batter electric power systems with greater frequency, an industry research group released Thursday a framework to help power companies improve resilience in the face of climate-driven extreme weather.
The Climate Resilience and Adaptation Initiative, or Climate READi, framework is the result of a three-year collaboration among 40 utilities and more than 100 academics, financial leaders and regulators guided by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), an independent research organization.
"We saw a growing need for answering people's questions motivated by wildfires, floods, hurricanes, ice storms, heat waves—whatever you see in a different part of the country or the world," Andrea Staid, a principal technical leader in EPRI's energy systems and climate analysis group told Newsweek. "The power system is not always able to handle these events, and they're happening much more frequently and, in some cases, they are much more severe."
Just in the period since EPRI launched the Climate READi collaboration in early 2022, there were 70 climate-related disasters in the U.S. that each caused more than $1 billion in damages, EPRI found.
A CenterPoint Energy crew worker wipes sweat from his brow as he works with others to restore power lines on July 11, 2024 in Houston, Texas.
A CenterPoint Energy crew worker wipes sweat from his brow as he works with others to restore power lines on July 11, 2024 in Houston, Texas.Data shows that those billion-dollar blows are coming with greater frequency. Since 1980, the annual average for those big-ticket disasters was 8.5 a year, EPRI said. But for the 5-year period from 2019 to 2023, billion-dollar disasters happened about 20 times a year.
That may be partly due to more housing and infrastructure being built in vulnerable areas such as coastlines and fire-prone places. But climate scientists are also finding the fingerprints of climate change in many extreme weather events.
A warmer climate holds more atmospheric moisture, raising the likelihood of intense rainfall and flooding. Higher sea surface temperatures cause tropical storms to grow stronger faster as they approach shore. And a "whiplash" between heavy rains and drought contributes to more dangerous wildfires.
Power systems are vulnerable to damage from winds, flooding and fire, and the costs of recovery can reach staggering sums.
"Waiting until events happen and then trying to restore and recover is much more costly than being proactive and trying to look ahead and plan for what we expect will be coming," Staid said.
One of the billion-dollar disasters that struck last year provided a case study for the need to better assess and plan for climate risks to power systems.
CenterPoint Energy, the main power provider for Houston, was in the process of developing a resilience plan when Hurricane Beryl struck the Texas coast last July, knocking out power to more than 2 million customers.
A week later, hundreds of thousands were still without power in the summer heat. As the outages dragged on, Texas lawmakers and regulators launched an investigation of CenterPoint's response and storm preparedness. The company estimated the total cost to repair damage from Beryl at about $1.2 billion.
Earlier this year, CenterPoint filed with Texas regulators what it called the "largest single grid resiliency investment in the company's history." The $5.75 billion plan will strengthen 130,000 power poles, increase tree-trimming and elevate substations to avoid flooding.
This month the company announced that it has placed 400 miles of power lines underground. CenterPoint said the resiliency investments will save about $50 million a year by preventing storm-related outages and keep the power on for more customers in the event of another hurricane like Beryl.
The Climate READi framework provides utility companies guidance on climate data, vulnerability assessments of power systems and a method for prioritizing needed investments in resiliency.
"Strengthening the electrical grid to be more resilient against extreme weather will be one of the electrical sector's biggest challenges for years to come," Southern California Edison CEO Steve Powell said in a statement. Powell served as the working group chair for Climate READi, and he said it provides a "data-driven, science-based framework" to assist decision makers.
However, some of the underlying data the framework depends on could become harder to get as the Trump administration seeks to eliminate programs associated with climate change.
For example, the data EPRI used to demonstrate the greater recent frequency of large-scale weather disasters came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which has maintained the "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database since 1980. Last week NOAA announced that due to "evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes" the database will no longer be updated, removing one of the most reliable sets of information on the costs of climate-driven extreme weather.
"If a tool or data source ceases to exist, then we will have to pivot," Staid said. "Good data makes for good results, and we really hope that there will continue to be good data available to do this work."
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