Going Beyond Zero: A Systems Efficiency Blueprint For Building Energy Optimization And Resilience

Industry experts and efficiency advocates agree that improving the efficiency of building systems is an important strategy for achieving the next level of efficiency in buildings. A systems approach considers the interactions of components within and among various building systems (e.g., heating and cooling systems, lighting systems, miscellaneous electric loads), as well as interactions among multiple buildings, and between the building and the electric grid.

The Systems Efficiency Initiative (SEI) provides a critical forum for understanding the energy savings potential of a systems approach and for developing strategies for moving the market in this direction. Toward this goal, the SEI’s …

Guide To Public-Private Collaboration On City Climate Resilience Planning

Climate change is causing increased temperatures, sea level rise, more intense extreme weather events, and other impacts across the United States. More cities are recognizing these risks and taking steps to increase their resilience to current and future impacts. At the same time, many businesses are also identifying and acting on climate risks. While guidance exists to help each of these sectors improve their climate resilience, there is no guidance on why and how they can work together to improve resilience planning. This report fills that gap.

Building on our previous research on resilience planning in large companies, C2ES worked …

Evaluating Proposed Investments in Power System Reliability and Resilience: Preliminary Results from Interviews with Public Utility Commission Staff

Policymakers and regulatory agencies are expressing renewed interest in the reliability and resilience of the U.S. electric power system in large part due to growing recognition of the challenges posed by climate change, extreme weather events, and other emerging threats. Unfortunately, there has been little or no consolidated information in the public domain describing how public utility/service commission (PUC) staff evaluate the economics of proposed investments in the resilience of the power system. Having more consolidated information would give policymakers a better understanding of how different state regulatory entities across the U.S. make economic decisions pertaining to reliability/resiliency. To help …

Climate Change and the Electricity Sector: Guide for Assessing Vulnerabilities and Developing Resilience Solutions to Sea Level Rise.

This report was prepared to provide guidance for: evaluating how sea level rise and storm surge hazards may impact the ability to provide electricity service; and, identifying and implementing solutions to enhance resilience. The document includes examples of various tools, methods and information resources that can assist in resiliency planning. In addition, climate resilience challenges and opportunities for different types of generation, transmission, and distribution assets are identified. It also includes general methods on how to estimate the costs and benefits of resilience measures.…

Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience

Efforts to build community resilience often focus on growing the capacity to “bounce back” from disruptions, like those caused by climate change. But climate change is not the only crisis we face, nor is preparing for disruption the only way to build resilience. Truly robust community resilience should do more. It should engage and benefit all community members, and consider all the challenges the community faces—from rising sea levels to a lack of living wage jobs. And it should be grounded in resilience science, which tells us how complex systems—like human communities—can adapt and persist through changing circumstances. Six Foundations …

Climate Change and the U.S. Energy Sector: Regional Vulnerabilities and Resilience Solutions

Changes in climate create diverse challenges across the U.S. energy system. Some energy infrastructure assets have already suffered damage or disruption in services from a variety of climate-related impacts, such as higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and more severe weather events. In the absence of concerted action to improve resilience, energy system vulnerabilities pose a threat to America’s national security, energy security, economic wellbeing, and quality of life.

Building climate change resilience into our energy infrastructure planning is a challenging and complex undertaking. Planning horizons can span several decades (the typical service life of most energy assets), associated investments can …

Resilience for Free: How Solar+Storage Could Protect Multifamily Affordable Housing from Power Outages at Little or No Net Cost

This report, Resilience for Free, shows that solar+storage systems can reduce costs and increase power resiliency in multifamily affordable housing. The report contains the first public analysis about whether it is economical to install solar+storage in affordable housing—making a strong case for greater public and private support for solar+storage development in affordable housing to serve critical public needs. This work suggests that battery storage is the emerging third generation of clean energy technologies for affordable housing in the country—following investments made in energy efficiency and renewable energy. With the right market structures and incentives, solar+storage systems can provide an economic …

White House Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience Recommended Actions

On November 1, 2013, President Obama signed Executive Order 13653, establishing the State, Local and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience. Its creation was part of the President’s Climate Action Plan (CAP), originally outlined on June 25, 2013, during a speech at Georgetown University. The Task Force assembled 26 governors, mayors, tribal leaders and county officials who’d shown leadership on climate change, and tasked them with advising the federal government on how to help communities become more climate-resilient.

One year after its establishment, on November 17, 2014, the Task Force released a 49-page report with 35 key …

Developing a Framework for Measuring Community Resilience: Summary of Workshop

The 2012 National Research Council report Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative highlighted the challenges of increasing national resilience in the United States. The report, sponsored by eight federal agencies and a community resilience organization, was national in scope and extended to stakeholders beyond the Washington, D.C. governmental community to recognize that experiential information necessary to understand national resilience lies in communities across the United States.1 One finding issued by the committee was that “without numerical means of assessing resilience, it would be impossible to identify the priority needs for improvement, to monitor changes, to show that resilience had improved, or …

Resilience in a Hotter World

In late 2011 devastating floods struck Thailand, upending supply chains. With suppliers of critical auto parts knocked out, the production of Toyota, Honda, and other carmakers fell by hundreds of thousands of vehicles (and Toyota took an earnings hit of $1.5 billion). In October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy flooded New York, a Con Edison electric substation exploded, plunging lower Manhattan into nearly four days of darkness. The record-setting 14-foot storm surge cost the utility more than $500 million— and New York businesses a total of $6 billion. A year later, Typhoon Haiyan, reportedly the most powerful storm to ever make …