Energy Sector

Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas

Oil and natural gas infrastructure is vulnerable to the effects of climate change and the increased risk of disasters such as storm, cyclones, flooding, and long‐term increases in sea level. Minimizing these risks by building in less disaster prone areas can be expensive and impossible in countries with coastal locations or island states. All thermal power stations depend on water to cool them. Not only is there increased demand for freshwater, but climate change can increase the likelihood of drought and freshwater shortages. Another impact for thermal power plants is that increasing the temperatures in which they operate reduces their efficiency and hence their output. The source of oil often comes from areas prone to high natural disaster risks such as tropical storms, hurricanes, cyclones, and floods. An example is Hurricane Katrina’s impact on oil extraction in the Gulf of Mexico, as it destroyed 126 oil and gas platforms and damaged 183 more (Urban and Mitchell 2011). However, previously pristine arctic areas will now be available for resource extraction.

Nuclear

Climate change, along with extreme weather and natural disasters, can affect nuclear power plants in a similar way to those using oil, coal, and natural gas. However, the impact of water shortages on nuclear power plants cooled by rivers will be greater than on other thermal power plants. This is because old reactor designs with water‐cooled cores must run at lower internal temperatures and thus, paradoxically, must dump more heat to the environment to produce a given amount of electricity. This situation has forced some nuclear reactors to be shut down and will do so again unless the cooling systems of these plants are enhanced to provide more capacity. Nuclear power supply was diminished by low river flow rates and droughts, which meant rivers had reached the maximum temperatures for cooling. Such shutdowns happened in France during the 2003 and 2006 heat waves. During the heat waves, 17 reactors had to limit output or shut down. In France 77% of electricity is produced by nuclear power; and in 2009 a similar situation created a 8 GW shortage, and forced the French government to import electricity. Other cases have been reported from Germany, where extreme temperatures have reduced nuclear power production nine times due to high temperatures between 1979 and 2007.

Hydroelectricity

Changes in the amount of river flow will correlate with the amount of energy produced by a dam. Lower river flows because of drought, climate change, or upstream dams and diversions will reduce the amount of live storage in a reservoir and therefore reduce the amount of water that can be used for hydroelectricity. The result of diminished river flow can be a power shortage in areas that depend heavily on hydroelectric power. The risk of flow shortage may increase as a result of climate change. Studies from the Colorado River in the United States suggest that modest climate changes (such as a 2 °C change that could result in a 10% decline in precipitation) might reduce river run‐off by up to 40%. Brazil, in particular, is vulnerable due to its having reliance on hydroelectricity as increasing temperatures, lower water flow, and alterations in the rainfall regime, could reduce total energy production by 7% annually by the end of the century (Urban and Mitchell 2011).

Transport

Roads, airport runways, railway lines, and pipelines (including oil pipelines, sewers, water mains etc.) may require increased maintenance and renewal as they become subject to greater temperature variation. Regions already adversely affected include areas of permafrost, which are subject to high levels of subsidence, resulting in buckling roads, sunken foundations, and severely cracked runways.