Power-Grid Resiliency Under Climate Change: Assessment and Options

Archive Project
Power-Grid Resiliency Under Climate Change: Assessment and Options

Focus Areas: 

  • Infrastructure & Investment
  • Workshop

The main objective is to examine the reliability of projections for power‑grid resiliency across the United States, while more fully characterizing uncertainty. The focus of this phase is to connect existing science and power‑grid resiliency modeling capabilities between MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the MIT Joint Program, so as to inform strategic thinking about adaptation and coping decisions for power‑grid resiliency. Using the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework, Joint Program investigators will prepare a set of climate/weather and water resource scenarios that include climate change and economic development. Scenario designs will represent a range of mitigation scenarios and climate sensitivities, and plausible regional hydro‑climatic changes. Lincoln Laboratory researchers will analyze the expected power generation capacity in each climate change scenario based on the mix of generation systems and corresponding impacts of changes in climate conditions. Combined with demand projections, the analysis will indicate vulnerable regions where substantial shortfalls would be expected. The work is expected to form the basis of a model framework that establishes baselines as well as probabilistic projections of the nation's power‑grid resiliency across a range of policy and/or adaptation pathways.

Funding Sources

Project Leaders

Administration, Faculty
CGCS; Joint Program