Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations
Climate change poses significant risks to large-scale infrastructure systems and brings considerable uncertainties that challenge historical planning approaches. Here we focus on how climate awareness might be better incorporated into planning and decision-making in the electric power sector. To do...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IOP Publishing
2022-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research Letters |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac7815 |
| _version_ | 1797747427346743296 |
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| author | Anna M Brockway Liyang Wang Laurel N Dunn Duncan Callaway Andrew Jones |
| author_facet | Anna M Brockway Liyang Wang Laurel N Dunn Duncan Callaway Andrew Jones |
| author_sort | Anna M Brockway |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Climate change poses significant risks to large-scale infrastructure systems and brings considerable uncertainties that challenge historical planning approaches. Here we focus on how climate awareness might be better incorporated into planning and decision-making in the electric power sector. To do so, we consider lessons from decision science literature where researchers have specifically focused on how to make better decisions under uncertainty. We perform a three-part review: of decision science literature on best practices for decision-making under uncertainty, of industry practice documents to understand how new uncertainties may affect the types of decisions electric utilities are making today, and of literature on electricity sector planning under climate change to assess how lessons from decision science might fit into sector-specific analyses. We discuss how characterizations of uncertainty from the decision science literature might guide approaches in the electricity sector to appropriately capture climate-related uncertainties. We also distill three key ideas from the decision science literature that can be incorporated into electricity sector planning to manage these new uncertainties: robustness, adaptive planning, and multi-stakeholder engagement. We offer example recommendations for how these key ideas might be incorporated into one essential type of planning activity, capacity expansion. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:51:24Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-f6049d7b613f4b71a9f64ed954eae2b6 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1748-9326 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-12T15:51:24Z |
| publishDate | 2022-01-01 |
| publisher | IOP Publishing |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Environmental Research Letters |
| spelling | doaj.art-f6049d7b613f4b71a9f64ed954eae2b62023-08-09T15:13:50ZengIOP PublishingEnvironmental Research Letters1748-93262022-01-0117707300210.1088/1748-9326/ac7815Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operationsAnna M Brockway0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5167-7594Liyang Wang1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1426-5010Laurel N Dunn2Duncan Callaway3Andrew Jones4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1913-7870Energy & Resources Group, University of California , Berkeley, CA, United States of America; Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences, University of California , Berkeley, CA, United States of AmericaEnergy & Resources Group, University of California , Berkeley, CA, United States of America; Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, CA, United States of AmericaPing Things , Sacramento, CA, United States of AmericaEnergy & Resources Group, University of California , Berkeley, CA, United States of America; Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences, University of California , Berkeley, CA, United States of AmericaEnergy & Resources Group, University of California , Berkeley, CA, United States of America; Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley, CA, United States of AmericaClimate change poses significant risks to large-scale infrastructure systems and brings considerable uncertainties that challenge historical planning approaches. Here we focus on how climate awareness might be better incorporated into planning and decision-making in the electric power sector. To do so, we consider lessons from decision science literature where researchers have specifically focused on how to make better decisions under uncertainty. We perform a three-part review: of decision science literature on best practices for decision-making under uncertainty, of industry practice documents to understand how new uncertainties may affect the types of decisions electric utilities are making today, and of literature on electricity sector planning under climate change to assess how lessons from decision science might fit into sector-specific analyses. We discuss how characterizations of uncertainty from the decision science literature might guide approaches in the electricity sector to appropriately capture climate-related uncertainties. We also distill three key ideas from the decision science literature that can be incorporated into electricity sector planning to manage these new uncertainties: robustness, adaptive planning, and multi-stakeholder engagement. We offer example recommendations for how these key ideas might be incorporated into one essential type of planning activity, capacity expansion.https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac7815electric power systemsclimate adaptationdecision-making under uncertaintyclimate-aware infrastructure planning |
| spellingShingle | Anna M Brockway Liyang Wang Laurel N Dunn Duncan Callaway Andrew Jones Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations Environmental Research Letters electric power systems climate adaptation decision-making under uncertainty climate-aware infrastructure planning |
| title | Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations |
| title_full | Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations |
| title_fullStr | Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations |
| title_short | Climate-aware decision-making: lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations |
| title_sort | climate aware decision making lessons for electric grid infrastructure planning and operations |
| topic | electric power systems climate adaptation decision-making under uncertainty climate-aware infrastructure planning |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac7815 |
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