Prof. Aseem Prakash and colleague Prof. Nives Dolšak argue in Forbes for hardening of our electrical delivery systems.
Climate transition has a clear action plan: “electrify everything.” This means replacing natural gas for residential heating and cooking with electricity and switching from internal combustion engines (ICEs) to electric vehicles (EVs)...With total dependence on electricity, how would households deal with power outages due to snow and windstorms, hurricanes, and wildfires? Are they now expected to install generators and battery backups? Given the relatively high costs of backups, low-income households will probably not be able to afford them. For these households, power outages might mean living in darkness and without heat.
Transmission/distribution issues are neglected in climate discussions, which is unfortunate because, without a reliable way to move electricity, energy decarbonization will be in trouble. Thus, climate transition requires massive investment in new high voltage transmission lines (where there is a significant national level shortfall), intra-regional and local distribution grids along with hardening the grid so that it can withstand punishment from extreme weather....
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