Sustainable Resilient Energy Infrastructure

Peter Evans, PhDVice PresidentCenter for Global Enterprise

April 7, 2015

CSIS Global Sustainability Series

Washington, DC

Growing attention to resilience

Resilience to what?

Types of Shocks/ Disruptions

Geophysical Hydrological Meteorological Climatological

• Earthquake

• Volcano

• Mass Movement [Dry]

RockfallLandslideAvalancheSubsidencer

• FloodsGeneral FloodFlash FloodStorm SurgeCoastal Flood

• Mass Movement[Wet]

RockfallLandslideAvalancheSubsidence

• StormsTropical CycloneExtra-Tropical CycloneLocal Storm

• Extreme TempHeat WaveCold WaveExtreme Winter Condition

• Drought

• WildfireForest FireLand Fire

Source: Adapted from Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters (2010)

Who is vulnerable?

~60% of major cities/ ~1 billion people at risk to at least 1 major natural disaster

*Risks to

cyclones,

droughts,

earthquakes,

floods, landslides,

and volcanic

eruptions

Source: UN DESA/Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision

*Notes: Includes cities with more than 750,000 inhabitants in 2011.

Hazards

World’s major cities face multiple natural hazards*

World-wide natural disasters 2014

Source: Munich Re, 2013

Geophysical events

(earthquake, tsunami, volcanic activity)

Meteorological events

(storm)

Selection of significant

Natural catastrophes

Natural catastrophes Hydrological events

(flood, mass movement)

Climatological events

(extreme temperature, drought, wildfire)

Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft, Geo Risks Research, NatCatSERVICE – As of January 2015

Major Loss Events

World-wide natural disaster trends

Source: “NAT CAT 2014: What’s Going on with the Weather?” Munich Re, January 7, 2015

Annual rate of events has more than doubled since 1980

New public policy imperativeBuilding resilient and sustainable infrastructure (RSI)

Source: P. Evans, 2013

“RSI”

Status

Quo

Greener

Environmental

footprint

reduction

H

L

Robust

ResilientL H

What is resilience?

1 Diversification

3 Couple / decouple

4 Pooling/ coordination

Redundancy5

2 Intelligence

Resilience… the

ability to bounce back faster after a stress or shock, endure greater stress or shock, and/or minimize the impact of a stress or shock.

Diverse solutions

Greater network linkages raise risk of cascading failures

Truck

network

Railroad

network

Natural gas

pipelines

Shale revolution is

creating incentives for new

network connections that

previously did not exits

Problem of network linkages Example of rail + natural gas + trucking

Timing… Where should we invest?

Time

Critical

Assets

Risk Mitigation Recovery

Disaster

Preparation

Response

Source: Adapted from World Economic Forum, “A Vision for Managing Natural Disaster Risk”, April 2011

Before, during or after shocks?

Business continuity

Before During After

Who pays?Flows of disaster recovery funding

Rupinder Paul Khandpur, Naren Ramakrishnan, James Bohlandy, Discovery Analytics Center, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2014

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake

• Major infrastructure across the Bay Area was destroyed or closed for an extended period

• Damage exceeded $6 billion

• Recovery funding often involves a complex array of organizations and flows of funding

Post-disaster financial flows

Post Disaster Recovery Funding

Rupinder Paul Khandpur, Naren Ramakrishnan, James Bohlandy, Discovery Analytics Center, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 2014

Are we doing enough to spur innovation?New products, services, business models, policy approaches

CROSS THE

CHASM

SCALE THE

BUSINESS

RUN THE

BUSINESS

OPTIMIZE

THE

BUSINESS

1 2 3 4 5

GET TO

MARKET

CommercializationEarly Stage

Source: P. Evans, Future of Energy, Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, April 23, 2013.

Our Energy Future

Some key challenges

Establishing resilient and sustainable energy systems

• Timing… incentivizing right allocation of resilience investment before, during and after shocks

• Funding… Resolving the issues of who pays… tax payers, rate payers, others?

• Innovation… Assessing where innovation can be encouraged that achieves both sustainability and resilience goals.

Sustainable Resilient Energy Infrastructure

Peter Evans, PhDVice PresidentCenter for Global Enterprise

April 7, 2015

CSIS Global Sustainability Series

Washington, DC