COP26 side-event: Addressing climate impacts and resiliency of the energy infrastructure
Venue: WMO-IPCC-UKMO Pavilion and Virtual
(Thursday, 4 November, 8:00-9:00 UK time)
Click here to watch the recorded video
Background
Extreme weather, water, and climate events have become more frequent and severe in the past few years, including winter storms, heatwaves, droughts, tornados, and floods. Most of them did not follow traditional weather patterns, and the latest IPCC report warns us to expect even more occurrences and damaging extremes in the future, exposing notably fragile populations and infrastructures. This stark warning signals that we will need reliable, flexible, and climate-resilient energy infrastructure that can withstand such events.
Objective
Our speakers combining scientific, industrial, and technical perspectives will: Identify sources of weather, water, and climate vulnerability, draw lessons from past events, and assess the preparedness of the energy sector to low-carbon and climate-resilient solutions; Highlight the strengths of existing and possible future energy systems, including nuclear power plants, against climate change and climate hazards; Stress the need for collective mitigation and adaptation strategies to deliver clean energy transitions at speed and scale, and note the opportunity presented by resilient and interconnected power grids, with decentralized options, to deliver decarbonization; and illustrate how recent technologies and scientific advances in weather and climate modeling and forecasting can help electricity players anticipate and adapt to extreme events and, in turn, assuring sustainable and reliable electricity services to the society.
Lead/Co-lead organizations:
WMO (Lead), IAEA, IEA, ADB
Livestream:
WMO YouTube Channel: https://youtu.be/BxxyDC6sWRQ
WMO COP26 portal: https://wmocop26.org/
Agenda
