(This post was co-authored by EDF’s Sarah Ladin and Romany Webb of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School)
As the owners and operators of immense infrastructure, electric utilities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
Many electric utilities are already struggling to respond to higher temperatures, changing rain patterns, more intense storms, and other climate impacts. Those impacts impair the operation of electric generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure. The situation will only worsen in coming decades, which makes it imperative that electric utilities act now to identify future climate impacts and develop tools and processes to manage them.
This type of planning is not just good practice, however. In our new report, Climate Risk in the Electricity Sector: Legal Obligations to Advance Climate Resilience Planning by Electric Utilities, we show that it is also legally required under state public utility law and tort law.
The transportation sector is at a crossroads: zero-emission trucks have the potential to cut pollution that causes climate change and harms human health. However, a transition away from diesel pollution will require strong leadership from policymakers and private sector executives alike.
With entire towns in Oregon and Washington razed, ash raining down on Denver and the skies over San Francisco an apocalyptic orange, the unprecedented wildfire season in the Western U.S. is getting plenty of coverage. But much of it seems to ignore a central fact: This devastation — more frequent, bigger wildfires, and a longer fire season — is largely a consequence of climate pollution produced by burning fossil fuels.