Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Introduction
The third U.S. national assessment of climate change impacts and responses, the Na -
tional Climate Assessment (NCA), includes a number of chapters summarizing impacts
on sectors, sectoral cross-cuts, and regions. One of the sectoral chapters is on the topic
of
energy supply and use
implications of climate change in the U.S., as speciied by the
Global Change Research Act of 1990.
As a part of the NCA efort, a number of member agencies of the U.S. Global Change
Research Program provided technical input regarding the topics of the NCA chapters.
For the
energy supply and use
topic, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is the respon-
sible agency; and this report was prepared for DOE by the Oak Ridge National Labora-
tory (ORNL) in support of the NCA. DOE's interest grows out of a continuing research
focus on climate change implications for energy supply and use systems, technologies,
and services, as irst demonstrated by its production of the US Climate Change Science
Program's Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.5,
Efects of Climate Change on Energy Pro-
duction and Use in the United States
, February 2008.
For broader issues related to relationships between energy infrastructures and oth-
ers such as water and transportation, see a sectoral cross-cuting technical input report
on Infrastructure, Urban Systems, and Vulnerability, also supported by DOE. For more
atention to energy-water-land system interactions, see an additional technical report on
that topic, supported by DOE,
All of the technical reports to the NCA were prepared on a highly accelerated sched-
ule. As an early step in organizing the NCA, a workshop was held in November 2010 to
discuss sectoral and regional assessment activities. Out of that workshop came a num-
ber of further topical workshops and a working outline of the NCA 2012 report, includ-
ing sectoral, regional, and cross-cuting chapters. In the summer of 2011, a number of
USGCRP agencies stepped forward to commission technical input reports - each with at
least one expert workshop and with a submission deadline of March 1, 2012, condensed
into a period of eight months or less. Meanwhile, the advisory commitee for the NCA
(NCADAC) appointed author groups for the report chapters, who have incorporated
the technical input in a NCA report to be submited to the U.S. Congress in 2014 (see
www.globalchange.gov
). This report beneited signiicantly from an expert workshop
co-hosted in Washington, DC, by the United States Energy Association (USEA) on No-
vember 29-30, 2011.
A inal draft of the full report was sent to nine distinguished external reviewers, three
of whom provided extensive comments and suggestions that were incorporated in this
document. Other external reviewers provided supportive comments by telephone.
The report summarizes current knowledge, especially emerging indings since 2007,
about implications of climate change for energy use, implications of climate change for
