Environmental Engineering Reference
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of the most valuable ways to respond to climate change. A smart grid improvement in one
community may help that community respond to climate change; that same improvement
may make it more difficult for another community, state, region, or country to respond
to climate change. At a global scale some argue that all efforts to promote renewable
electricity generation are good for climate change, but within this topic we have
demonstrated flaws in that simple assertion.
Beyond climate change mitigation and adaptation, many other issues motivate interest
in smart grid. Throughout the previous chapters of this topic we explored many of these
othermotivatingfactors,includingreducedelectricity costs,improvedefficiency,increased
electricity access, minimized electricity theft, and enhanced energy security. Other
environmental benefits beyond climate change are also motivating factors for smart grid,
including reducing negative environmental impacts of coal, gas, and oil extraction and
combustion on human health and biodiversity. Ensuring that smart grid will help society
respond to climate change requires creative synergistic integration of climate objectives
with other economic, social, and environmental objectives.
The complexity of smart grid illustrates both the challenges and the opportunities of
integrating climate change priorities into broader societal and user goals. The smart grid
story highlights how important it is for those advocating for climate policy to connect their
priorities with other societal objectives. Across multiple venues, climate priorities are not
part of the dominant decision making logic of many electricity system actors; rather, they
must be explicitly woven into initiatives and policies that are simultaneously advancing
other economic, social, and environmental objectives. The vague inclusiveness of the term
smart grid appeals to a diversity of supporters, but also obscures actors' divergent values
and system endpoints. General smart grid debates often omit the critical details of how
future electricity systems will develop; yet these details remain essential if smart grid is to
help societies confront and adapt to climate change.
Investment in a smarter grid is happening now. Responding and adapting to climate
change is a critical societal imperative, and smart grid design must reflect and integrate
climate goals into its design and operation. Until climate goals are explicitly embedded
within formal electricity system decision making structures, smart grid development may
perpetuate growing greenhouse gas emissions by strengthening the dominant energy
system growth paradigm of increasing electricity generation and use. Getting smart about
linking electricity system change and climate change objectives is an urgent societal
priority.
So, how to negotiate the tensions we have highlighted in this chapter in ways that nudge
smart grid toward enabling both climate change mitigation and adaptation? While climate
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