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3 - Implications of climate change for energy systems in a multisectoral context
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- By Thomas J. Wilbanks, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge
- Edited by Jamie Pittock, Australian National University, Canberra, Karen Hussey, Australian National University, Canberra, Stephen Dovers, Australian National University, Canberra
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- Book:
- Climate, Energy and Water
- Published online:
- 05 April 2015
- Print publication:
- 19 March 2015, pp 28-44
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Summary
Introduction
For decades, energy production and use have been considered the primary culprits as observers try to assign blame for climate change. Beyond question, patterns of energy resource development and technology use, combined with growing global appetites for energy services for socioeconomic development, are important drivers of climate change. But energy systems are also vulnerable to impacts of climate change on energy activities themselves and also on other infrastructures on which energy systems depend. Energy systems are therefore victims of climate change, as well as culprits.
The process of understanding how climate change impacts can be a risk-management challenge for energy policy makers, decision makers and stakeholders is just beginning to emerge, because for so many years, impacts were not a focus of research – or even of serious discussion. A number of recent assessments, however, are beginning to sketch out a picture of vulnerabilities, risks and possible impacts, and many energy providers are seeing enough evidence of climate-related impacts on their operations that they are taking climate change impacts seriously.
This chapter will first summarise what is currently known about sensitivities of energy systems to climate change, including linkages with other systems and infrastructures. It will then summarise the exposures to climate change that are of the greatest concern for energy systems along with several issues raised by a less-than-perfect fit between the outputs of major climate change models and the needs of energy risk management. Next, it will summarise recent findings about the most serious implications of climate change for energy systems in both the near and the long term. Finally, it will consider possible strategies for reducing vulnerabilities and impacts of climate change on energy systems.
Several themes thread through the various parts of the chapter: the current focus of decision makers on extreme weather events; the fact that direct effects of climate change interact with other driving forces for energy-sector impacts; and capacities for major energy-sector institutions to reduce vulnerabilities and manage risks once they are recognised.
Summary for Policymakers
- from Section II
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- By Simon K. Allen, Vicente Barros, Ian Burton, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, Omar-Dario Cardona, Susan L. Cutter, O. Pauline Dube, Kristie L. Ebi, Christopher B. Field, John W. Handmer, Padma N. Lal, Allan Lavell, Katharine J. Mach, Michael D. Mastrandrea, Gordon A. McBean, Reinhard Mechler, Tom Mitchell, Neville Nicholls, Karen L. O'Brien, Taikan Oki, Michael Oppenheimer, Mark Pelling, Gian-Kasper Plattner, Roger S. Pulwarty, Sonia I. Seneviratne, Thomas F. Stocker, Maarten K. van Aalst, Carolina S. Vera, Thomas J. Wilbanks
- Edited by Christopher B. Field, Vicente Barros, Thomas F. Stocker, Qin Dahe
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- Book:
- Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation
- Published online:
- 05 August 2012
- Print publication:
- 28 May 2012, pp 3-22
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Summary
Context
This Summary for Policymakers presents key findings from the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). The SREX approaches the topic by assessing the scientific literature on issues that range from the relationship between climate change and extreme weather and climate events (‘climate extremes’) to the implications of these events for society and sustainable development. The assessment concerns the interaction of climatic, environmental, and human factors that can lead to impacts and disasters, options for managing the risks posed by impacts and disasters, and the important role that non-climatic factors play in determining impacts. Box SPM.1 defines concepts central to the SREX.
The character and severity of impacts from climate extremes depend not only on the extremes themselves but also on exposure and vulnerability. In this report, adverse impacts are considered disasters when they produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the normal functioning of communities or societies. Climate extremes, exposure, and vulnerability are influenced by a wide range of factors, including anthropogenic climate change, natural climate variability, and socioeconomic development (Figure SPM.1). Disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change focus on reducing exposure and vulnerability and increasing resilience to the potential adverse impacts of climate extremes, even though risks cannot fully be eliminated (Figure SPM.2). Although mitigation of climate change is not the focus of this report, adaptation and mitigation can complement each other and together can significantly reduce the risks of climate change. [SYR AR4, 5.3]
2 - The research strategy: linking the local to the global
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- By Thomas J. Wilbanks, Corporate Research Fellow and Leader of Global Change and Developing country Programs Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)., Robert W. Kates, University Professor Brown University, David P. Angel, Associate Professor of Geography and Dean of Graduate Studies and Research Clark University, Susan L. Cutter, Carolina Distinhuished Professor University of South Carolina, William E. Easterling, Professor of Geography and Earth System Science Pennsylvania State University, Michael W. Mayfield, Professor Department of Geography and Planning, Appalachian State University
- Association of American Geographers GCLP Research Team
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- Book:
- Global Change and Local Places
- Published online:
- 31 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 June 2003, pp 27-54
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Summary
In the beginning …
The Global Change and Local Places project of the Association of American Geographers originated in a 1992 meeting at which participants formulated three propositions:
The grand query regarding the ways scale matters in understanding global climate change would benefit from detailed case studies of localities that were linked to scholars active in climate change-related research at global and national scales;
Such case studies could constitute a basis for designing a research protocol for use in other local case studies, thereby helping build a body of empirical research that could serve as a basis for developing a bottom-up paradigm for global climate change research to complement the dominant top-down paradigm; and
These locality studies should be based at universities whose faculty possessed detailed, long-term knowledge of their local areas, in some cases engaging scholars in global change research who might otherwise not normally participate in a large-scale research project.
Funding for the project outlined at the 1992 meeting was sought and eventually obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Mission to Planet Earth Program (subsequently renamed Destination Earth). Intensive work on the project began in 1996 and continued through 2001. The several rounds of proposal writing that preceded funding refined the theoretical rationale for the project and its central components: four study areas located in Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and three cross-cutting modules devoted respectively to estimating local greenhouse gas emissions, understanding the forces driving those emissions, and assessing local emission reduction potentials.
11 - Long-term potentials for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from local areas
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- By Thomas J. Wilbanks, Corporate Research Fellow and Leader of Global Change and Developing Country Programs Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Robert W. Kates, University Professor Emeritus Brown University
- Association of American Geographers GCLP Research Team
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- Book:
- Global Change and Local Places
- Published online:
- 31 July 2009
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- 26 June 2003, pp 217-238
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Summary
Focusing on local actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions becomes increasingly rewarding when the analysis extends beyond current attitudes and actions toward the long term. This chapter looks out to the year 2020, with attention to the intermediate Kyoto Protocol time frame of 2010 as well. Considering the possibility that a consensus will emerge in the United States that greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced, project investigators asked how local knowledge and action could make those reductions more probable and less painful.
Global and national perspectives on long-term potentials
The Global Change and Local Places project originated in the early 1990s amid growing concerns about the likelihood of global climate change, disruptive long-range impacts of climate change, and the resulting needs to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and to stop degrading greenhouse gas sinks. As the project proceeded, so also did major analyses of these issues at the global and national scales, providing a backdrop for the Global Change and Local Places results as well as a basis for comparing the project's local-scale perspectives with findings from analyses at grander scales.
How much greenhouse gas emission reduction is needed?
Although it is not the only greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide concentrations are commonly used as indicators for greenhouse gas concentrations more generally. In 2000, carbon dioxide constituted about 370 parts per million (ppm) of the Earth's atmosphere. Some warming and associated physical and biological impacts were already evident.
12 - Global change and local places: lessons learned
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- By Robert W. Kates, University Professor Emeritus Brown University, Thomas J. Wilbanks, Corporate Research Fellow and Leader of Global Change and Developing Country Programs Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Ronald F. Abler, Secretary General and Treasurer International Geographical Union
- Association of American Geographers GCLP Research Team
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- Book:
- Global Change and Local Places
- Published online:
- 31 July 2009
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- 26 June 2003, pp 239-260
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Summary
Four major questions have informed the Global Change and Local Places research agenda from its inception:
How do the dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions and their driving forces differ at local scale?
Can localities reduce their source contributions to global climate change?
How and where does scale matter? and
How can the capacity to study global change in localities be improved?
The project's major findings, insights, and lessons can be cast as answers to these four key questions and as three major observations regarding the ways the global and the local relate to each other, stated as variants of the familiar slogan Think globally and act locally.
How do the dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions and their driving forces differ at local scale?
The importance of attention to local scale lies not in uncovering differences in descriptions of greenhouse gas emissions by major categories, but in details that are often lost in larger aggregations. The details in question are often critical to designing effective mitigation strategies.
Overall, 1990 greenhouse gas emissions for the four study areas are significantly, but not greatly, different from global, national, and their respective state level emissions (Chapter 7). Local emissions differ moderately in the mix of greenhouse gases, somewhat more so in sources, and considerably more in total per capita and per square kilometer emissions. Carbon dioxide dominates the mix of greenhouse gases at our sites as it does nationally (Table 7.3).
1 - A grand query: how scale matters in global change research
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- By Robert W. Kates, University Professor Brown University, Thomas J. Wilbanks, Corporate Research Fellow and Leader of Global Change and Developing country Programs Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
- Association of American Geographers GCLP Research Team
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- Book:
- Global Change and Local Places
- Published online:
- 31 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 26 June 2003, pp 3-26
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Summary
Grand queries are fundamental questions that transcend the form and substance of individual sciences; they often appear simultaneously in many disciplines. A recurring grand query focuses on scale: how to relate universals to particulars, wholes to parts, macro-processes to micro-behavior, and global to local. Biologists ponder the linkages among molecules, cells, and organisms; ecologists among patches, ecosystems, and biomes; economists among firms, industries, and economies; and geographers among places, regions, and Earth (Rediscovering Geography Committee 1997: 95–102; Alexander et al. 1987; Holling 1992; Levin 1992; Meyer and Turner 1998; Meyer et al. 1992; Turner, M. G. et al. 1993). Scientists in many disciplines worry about non-linear processes and complexity: whether understanding its components can explain the properties of a large system (Gallagher and Appenzeller 1999). Or the reverse, as in the case of global climate change: can the rapidly accruing understanding of the large Earth system inform the ways people and biota in particular places alter climate and in turn are affected by climate change?
This chapter places the Global Change and Local Places project in the context of a grand query: how scale matters in global climate change. It examines the scale at which global change and responses to it take place, and how well the current scales of science and policy match the current scales at which changes are engendered.