Although Obama’s recent Executive Order on Climate Change
Preparedness* only applies to US government departments and agencies I suspect
the concept will quickly be adopted by many other governments around the
world.
Not only government departments
but also most public funded organizations such as schools, universities,
hospitals etc. will be required to develop Climate Change Preparedness Plans.
President Obama’s Climate Change Preparedness order is a
welcome recognition of the fact that we are pretty well past the point of no
return in terms of slowing down or stopping climate change. Most universities and other organizations who
are attempting to wrestle with climate change today for the most part are only undertaking token mitigation initiatives such
as recycling paper, installing high efficiency light bulbs or deploying energy
efficient heating and cooling. I liken these efforts to throwing pillows off
the Titanic. Sure, they may slow down
the rate of sinking by a miniscule amount, but it is not going to change the
ultimate outcome. The real focus of our efforts should be manning the
lifeboats.
Most people fail to understand that it is the cumulative CO2
emissions that cause climate change, and not our current emission rate. If magically we were to stop all emissions
today, the system has already a baked in global average temperature increase of
almost 2C due to the cumulative emissions produced by humans since the start of
the industrial age.
To put that in perspective in the late 1700s, prior to the
industrial age, when the average global temperature was .8C cooler than now,
New York City Harbor would routinely freeze over*. In many years people could
walk across the ice from Staten Island to Manhattan. If New York harbor routinely froze over when
the world was .8C cooler than it is now, imagine what the world is going to be
like when we are 2C or even 4C warmer than today!
Even if we could develop a global consensus on the
seriousness of climate change, the global effort to eliminate virtually all
sources of CO2 would be staggering. To
stabilize global temperatures at 2C we would have to build the clean energy equivalent
of a new nuclear power plant very day for the next 50 years*!!
Its time to face reality and realize that building this amount of clean energy power simply is
not going to happen. We really need to
think seriously about manning the lifeboats and preparing for eventual dramatic
changes that will happen with a rapidly warming climate.
According to a recent Department of Energy study “US Energy
sector vulnerabilities to climate change and extreme weather*” the electrical grid is probably the most
fragile infrastructure that is susceptible to climate change. While utilities are making effort to
strengthen transmission lines and build redundant capacity it is still expected
that the number of Megawatt hours that will be lost due to severe weather due
to climate change will increase significantly over the next decade. It is predicted that coal and nuclear power
generating capacity will decrease by between 4 and 16 percent in the United
States and a 6 to 19 percent decline in Europe due to simple lack of cooling
water*. Tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts
and severe flooding will cause further disruption to the power grid and
generating stations.
In light of these developments and Obama’s Executive Order
it is time for R&E networks and universities to start to develop Climate
Change Preparedness plans themselves.
They need to evaluate the risks to their own institution's facilities
from climate change and project the likely impacts for the most benign to the
extreme worst case scenarios.
How will institutions and networks cope with frequent and
long duration power outages? Will the
campus be subject to frequent flooding or droughts? What backup measures and systems will be
required? What labs and/or buildings will
need critical 24 hr power? What type of
on campus power solutions will be required to keep critical facilities operating?
R&E networks will play a critical role in ensuring that education
and research service can still be accessed remotely throughout the worst of any
prolonged outages. But the networks
themselves must ensure that they can provide ongoing service, especially if
there are long term outages.
Dependence on diesel generators for backup power for institutions
or networks may not be sufficient because of refinery and transportation
outages. Hurricane Sandy was a wakeup call in this regard. Also most governments have disaster
contingency plans that prioritize fuel shipments to hospitals or other critical
services ahead of most university and R&E network requirements.
The other important role that R&E network staff can play
is in the design and deployment of the future Energy Internet. Increasingly engineers and scientists are
recognizing that the future energy infrastructure will look increasingly more
like the original data Internet. It will be distributed with multiple power
routes, packet based power delivery (pulse power or EV) and use a variety of distribution techniques
such PoE, AC, 400/60 Hz, etc and have multiple power sources such as local
solar panels, windmills, EV batteries
etc. Sophisticated routing protocols
will be required to route power to loads or shed them as required to match
available local energy sources such as EV batteries.
Companies like Solantro are developing the necessary semi-conductor
chips to enable this type of smart energy distribution management. R&E network scientists and engineers developed the original Internet and it is now their responsibility to develop the protocols, services and deployments for the Energy Internet.
*References
1. Obama Executive Order on Climate Change Preparedness
2. US Energy sector vulnerabilities to climate change and
extreme weather” US Department of Energy
July 2013
3. Latest Developments in Data Center in Power and Energy
Issues
Solantro