{"id":5587,"date":"2018-02-20T10:36:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T15:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/?p=5587"},"modified":"2018-02-21T11:23:58","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T16:23:58","slug":"climate-resilience-in-the-bulk-power-system-new-whitepaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/climatechange\/2018\/02\/20\/climate-resilience-in-the-bulk-power-system-new-whitepaper\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Resilience in the Bulk Power System: New White Paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Justin Gundlach and Romany Webb<\/em><\/p>\n

Resilience\u2014the capacity to withstand, absorb, recover from, and better adapt to disruption\u2014is currently a popular topic of discussion and debate. Several factors, including a string of disasters<\/a> and unrelated but coincident regulatory processes<\/a>, have made resilience a key objective for a wide array of policy makers. They include the entities responsible for shaping the generation and transmission facilities that make up the bulk power system (BPS): the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the North American Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC), and regional Independent Service Operators and Regional Transmission Organizations (ISO\/RTOs). On January 8, for instance, FERC opened a proceeding<\/a> \u201cto explore resilience issues in the RTOs\/ISOs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resilience is a derivative concept, meaning that a system, facility, or community is not simply resilient, but is more or less resilient to<\/em> a particular sort of disruption. FERC, NERC, and ISO\/RTOs have explored what is necessary to make the BPS resilient to cyber attack, physical attack, or a large-scale electromagnetic pulse. However, as we explain in a new white paper — Climate Change Impacts on the Bulk Power System: Assessing Vulnerabilities and Planning for Resilience<\/a><\/em><\/strong> — they have not examined in a systematic way as necessary to enhance the BPS\u2019s resilience to climate-driven disruptions and constraints. This is a cause for concern as the various impacts of climate change, from higher average temperatures to altered precipitation patterns to more frequent and powerful hurricanes and wildfires, pose major threats to the BPS. They could, in the future, prevent the BPS delivering reliable electricity services at just and reasonable prices as required by the Federal Power Act.<\/p>\n

Our white paper collects recent research highlighting the implications of climate change for the BPS and explains how FERC and ISO\/RTOs can assess and respond to them. It recommends:<\/p>\n