Past is Prologue for Climate Change Threats to U.S. Energy

A new report from the U.S. Department of Energy suggests that blackouts and other energy disruptions are likely to increase as a result of climate change

By Umair Irfan and ClimateWire

Image: Flickr/zokug

Energy and climate change are intertwined, a fact that the Obama administration recently acknowledged with plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from generators. Experts note, however, that shifting rainfall, heat waves and storms have severe consequences for the energy sector, as well.

The Department of Energy issued a report yesterday definitively linking certain energy infrastructure disruptions like power plant shutdowns, blackouts and transmission interruptions to the changing climate, projecting that these threats may get worse and create cascading impacts (Greenwire, July 11).

The new report pieces together energy production problems over the past decade linked to climate variables like drought, extreme heat and floods, filling in a picture of America's vulnerability. "No one has ever thought to compile this and look at them together in one place," said Jonathan Pershing, deputy assistant secretary of Energy for climate change policy and energy at DOE, who supervised the report's production.

While U.S. EPA is getting the ball rolling on carbon emissions restrictions on fossil fuel-fired generators, Pershing explained that DOE is illustrating in this report how these plants are creating problems for themselves already, along with what managers can do to dampen these risks now. "It is explicitly about adaptation," he said.

Climate change may still be a touchy subject in energy, especially when it comes to fossil fuels, but plant managers are growing increasingly concerned about how environmental factors may drive their bottom line. "A lot of that is driven by concerns about extreme weather events more than long-term climate," said Thomas Wilbanks, a corporate research fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory who co-authored the report.

Many of the power plants, transmission lines, transformers and substations that provide electrons on tap were constructed decades ago in an era of cheap fuels and blissful ignorance about climate change. Pushed to extremes by the climate -- whether it's millions of air conditioners running simultaneously during a heat wave, or water too warm to cool a steam column, or record snowfall -- these systems start to crack.

From mining fuel to the generators to the hardware carrying electricity, every segment of America's energy infrastructure faces climate repercussions, according to DOE.

When it rains, it pours
Earlier this year, 660,000 customers lost power in the Northeast following a winter storm due to transmission damage. Barge traffic on the Mississippi River, including coal and petroleum shipments, slowed due to low water levels (ClimateWire, March 22). Last summer, eight power plants in Illinois sought and received permission to discharge water hotter than is permitted under federal Clean Water Act permits. The report highlights 30 examples of such anomalies, which may become the norm.

Though acute events like storms have obvious and well-understood effects on electric infrastructure like knocking down power lines, a more ominous threat is presented by two key climate variables: heat and water.

"If you think about temperature, at higher temperatures, your efficiencies of power generation go down," said Vincent Tidwell, a distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories and a co-author of the report. "You also lose capacity in transmission lines."

On the demand side, cooling needs create load spikes during the hottest part of the day. Meanwhile, high temperatures increase risks of wildfires, which can burn through transmission lines that cross grasslands and forests. "Any single piece by itself may not be a huge factor, but when you put together all those factors, it becomes pretty important," Tidwell said.

Source: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=past-prologue-climate-change-threats-us-energy

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