Energy grids, power stations and distribution networks are vulnerable to storms, flooding and heatwaves caused by climate change, say World Energy Council
Fiona Harvey The Guardian 1 Oct 15;
The world’s energy infrastructure is at risk from the extreme weather expected to result from climate change, a group of prominent energy companies has warned.
Energy systems, including fossil fuel power stations, distribution grids, and the networks that reach to people’s homes, are all at risk from effects such as flooding, severe storms and sea level rises, according to a new report from the World Energy Council, which brings together energy companies, academics and public sector agencies.
When energy systems fail, the knock-on effects on other aspects of modern infrastructure - from water and sewage to transport and health - can be catastrophic.
Experts point to the effects of Hurricane Sandy in New York to show that these effects are not limited to the developing world, where most of the serious consequences of climate change are expected to wreak havoc, but will be felt even in the most modern of cities.
Christoph Frei, secretary-general of the World Energy Council (WEC), warned that the question of the resilience of modern energy systems under the threat of imminent disaster must be treated as one of great urgency. “We are on a path where today’s unlikely events will be tomorrow’s reality,” he said. “We need to imagine the unlikely. Traditional systems, based on predicted events, no longer operate in isolation.”
The warning comes ahead of a UN climate summit in Paris later this year where developed and developing countries are expected to agree a deal on how to mitigate and adapt to global warming’s impacts.
Adaptation to the effects of global warming will be a key theme of the conference, with the EU in particular promoting the issue as one in which developed countries must provide finance to the poor to enable them to deal with extreme weather.
Even if the most optimistic estimates in terms of emissions cuts are reached, a level of built-in global warming could result in dire problems across the world, as governments and companies struggle to adapt infrastructure that was built for calmer times.
WEC warned that the number of extreme weather events globally had risen by a factor of more than four in the past three decades, from about 38 events - such as major storms, heatwaves and flooding - to 174 events in 2014. The insurance industry has struggled to keep up, with global insured losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters reaching $35bn (£23bn) last year, with the losses of the uninsured exceeding $130bn.
Frei warned: “Current estimates for the cost of energy system adaptation do not fully account for the additional financing required to accommodate these new emerging risks.”
The amount of financing that developed countries are prepared to commit to poorer nations from the end of this decade, to help them cope with the ravages of global warming, is a major unknown at the Paris conference, and could still derail the talks.
Frei called for a strong agreement in Paris that would acknowledge the scale of the difficulties being faced: “With the quadrupling of extreme weather events over the past 30 years, the resilience challenge will impact crucial energy infrastructure and investments in all countries. Therefore we need the negotiations in Paris to harvest the INDC commitments [climate pledges by countries] and translate them into the clear price signal that we need for the energy sector to transform.”
