EPRI’s Climate REsilience and ADaptation initiative (READi) is dedicated to developing a comprehensive and consistent approach to assessing physical climate risk to power industry assets and systems and identifying a framework to address those risks and enhance resilience of the systems. The objective of this effort is to develop a common approach to risk identification, adaptation, and planning for the impacts of climate change on energy grid assets and the integrated power system. In this literature review, we seek to characterize the current state of knowledge and identify research gaps regarding potential physical climate risks to topics that cut across the electric power sector, including health and safety of electric utility workers, equity and environmental justice for communities served, and ecological patterns in the environment in which power systems are located. The health and safety consequences of extreme heat – including heat stress and reduced worker productivity – are among the most well-understood of possible climate impacts; both are projected to become larger problems with further climate change.
Key takeaways include the following. For worker health and safety, floods and wildfires can directly and indirectly affect electric utility workers through exposures to floodwaters and wildfire smoke, and through increased workloads because of the consequences of these events. Climate change can affect air quality by increasing the concentration and seasonality of pollen and thereby possibly increasing the numbers of outdoor workers with allergies and asthma. Increases in the geographic range and seasonality of climate-sensitive vector-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease, West Nile virus, and dengue fever, could increase exposure of outdoor electric utility workers, depending on the effectiveness of public health surveillance and control programs. Climate change may exacerbate higher energy burdens and energy poverty in disadvantaged communities due to heating and cooling needs in more extreme temperatures as well as more significant health impacts that may be due in part to unhealthful indoor and outdoor environments.
Regarding energy equity, for disadvantaged and vulnerable communities, a lack of access to critical resources during power outages caused by extreme events, some of which are projected to increase in frequency and severity, can present extraordinarily difficult challenges. Assessing spatial and socioeconomic distribution of climate impacts along with grid-hardening measures, community-level microgrids, energy storage, and other distributed energy resources can inform prioritization and decision-making that advances equity and environmental justice while addressing resilience and adaptation.
And considering ecological patterns, shifting distribution or migration patterns of protected species and declining biodiversity overall due to changing climate conditions may result in additional environmental restrictions for power companies and could make meeting environmental sustainability goals more difficult to achieve. Shifting distribution or migration patterns of nuisance species and changes to vegetation growth patterns due to changing climate conditions may result in additional operation and management costs for power companies.
The development of a framework to assess climate change risk and vulnerability across the electric power sector would guide an organized, thorough, and efficient approach to managing climate change risk at these facilities.