Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
D. Issues To Be Resolved
Finally, both available source materials and the workshop discussion point to several
cross-cuting issues for risk management strategies by and for the US energy sector.
• Adapting to extremes. An assessment inding in section III D of this report notes
that the major current risks of disruptions to energy supply related to climate
change are from extreme weather events, and longer-term risks are associated
with changes in climate and weather extremes, such as droughts, heat waves,
and signiicant sea-level rise. The IPCC special report on
• Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate
Change Adaptation (SREX, 2011) responds to perceptions of decision-makers
that adapting to risks of extremes and extreme events is diferent, and often
more diicult, than adapting to gradual changes - especially when many
disruptions are high-consequence/low-probability events for particular local
contexts but high-probability for larger regions.
• Locational strategies relative to especially vulnerable areas. As noted above
in this report, many risks to energy supply and use in the US are associated
with locations in areas especially vulnerable to such projected climate change
impacts as (a) more intense coastal storms together with sea-level rise and (b)
signiicant chronic or seasonal water scarcity. In many cases, near-term strate-
gies involve incremental bufering or hardening of existing systems in place,
but such sources as SAP 4.7 (2008) - which projects apparent sea-level rise in
the Gulf Coast area of 2-4 feet by 2050 - suggest that longer-term risk reduction
strategies may have to consider the relocation of infrastructures and jobs (e.g.,
Kates, Travis, and Wilbanks, forthcoming). Because such contingencies involve
complex relationships with regions and localities and their citizens and policy-
makers, they raise obvious issues for stakeholder interactions as well as corpo-
rate planning.
• Relationships between climate change mitigation and adaptation. The energy
sector, especially on the supply side, is both the global and the national focus of
climate change mitigation: eforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particu-
larly carbon dioxide. As a result, there is usually no way to avoid mitigation
issues in considering impact risk-reducing adaptation strategies. Such rela-
tionships are notably salient in considering resource/technology portfolios for
electricity generation, afordable renewable energy strategies, potential roles
of natural gas in energy supply and use, and eiciency improvement in energy
end uses associated with carbon emissions, such as transportation. A notable
example is bioenergy production, where major production would have land use
and carbon uptake implications as well as alternative fuel implications.
• As indicated in section III B 4, analyses of possible synergies between mitiga-
tion and adaptation strategies for energy supply and use are scarce at this point,
but it appears very likely that there are more opportunities than have been
explored to date between eiciency and redundancy. Literatures on emergency
preparedness and community resilience (e.g., Cuter, et al., 2008) tend to stress
