Can Our Global Energy Industry Weather Extreme Weather?

James ConcaContributor , Nov 22, 2019, 11:16pm

Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency published their new report, Adapting the Energy Sector to Climate Change, that explores a range of climate impacts on the energy sector resulting from gradual climate change together with extreme weather events. The report also considers possible ways to counter them. 

The report considers the effect of extreme weather events on fossil fuel power, renewable energy technologies, nuclear power and electricity grids. The competing problems to these effects is the push to transform the energy sector to low-carbon sources, provide energy to adapt to climate change, and to provide enough energy to eradicate global poverty and raise every human up into a good life.

This is not an academic exercise. The figure below shows the reported occurrence of droughts and floods globally since 1977, which exhibit a significant increase.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/11/22/can-our-global-energy-industry-weather-extreme-weather/#15b06c5b3248

The biggest impacts of gradual climate change on thermal power plants such as natural gas, nuclear, oil and coal are the reduction of thermal efficiency due to warmer average temperatures, and the lesser volume and higher temperature of water in nearby rivers and lakes, which affects cooling efficiency and water availability. Various alternative cooling options are available, ranging from simple and conservative options like using non-traditional water sources, reusing process water from flue gases, coal drying and using condensers, to more radical and expensive technologies such as dry cooling. 

The implications of extreme weather events for fossil fuel thermal power plants are diverse and can lead to severe structural damage and financial losses. Protecting fossil fuel stockpiles (coal, oil, gas) from overheating, flooding, extreme winds and lightning is of major importance to ensuring the uninterrupted operation of the plants even under severe weather conditions. 

While extreme weather events have rarely affected nuclear plants, they have often affected fossil fuel generation. Polar vortexes, hurricanes and flooding make flood protection and reinforcement of buildings, cooling towers and other structures key for safe and reliable operation in the future. 

Because fossil fuel is all about the fuel, delivery of fuel during extreme events is a key failure point, especially for coal and gas, as we’ve seen during previous events. Coal stacks are frozen or diesel generators simply can’t function in extremely low temperatures. Gas chokes up - its pipelines can’t keep up with demand - and prices skyrocket. Flooding prevents fossil fuel from being loaded, unloaded or transported.