Reducing Infrastructure Climate Risk Through Technology Measures: Energy and Water Resources (IC40)

This paper aims to identify the key strategies or actions that can be taken by energy and water resource infrastructure assets to decarbonise and build climate resilience. The intended use is to convey a high-level overview of influential approaches that can be taken towards these objectives that encompass a wide range of infrastructure assets. As such, it is a “top-down” approach to analysis, focusing on the general properties of assets in major infrastructure sectors and exploring which decarbonisation and climate resilience strategies may be effective in multiple sectors.

We aim to find the most material strategies for both decarbonisation and physical resilience and gauge their effectivity.

Our literature review identifies the most material strategies, and their associated key technologies, across Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and four climate-related physical risks - floods, extreme wind, extreme heat, and wildfires - and assess their effectiveness at reducing emissions or damage respectively. These four have been chosen as they have proven to be the most common climate-related physical risks over the 20-year period from 2000-2019 (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, 2020). 

This paper details how these strategies are relevant to the energy and water resource infrastructure class, how they might differ between different types of assets, and how they can best be employed by asset owners, filling a critical knowledge gap in the industry.