A New Paradigm for Climate Resilience Planning: APS, Duke and Other Power Companies Explore Strategies to Address Extreme Weather
With the frequent occurrence of extreme weather events such as Hurricanes Milton and Helene, the U.S. power industry is accelerating climate resilience planning. Based on NOAA data and research from multiple institutions, this article analyzes the response strategies of companies such as Duke Energy and Arizona Public Service, and explores how emerging tools like the EPRI Climate READi framework are reshaping industry standards.
Electric utilities are rethinking their planning approaches in response to increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events such as Hurricanes Milton and Helene. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the U.S. has experienced 24 billion-dollar weather disasters so far in 2024; over the past decade, such events have affected all 50 states. Between 2019 and 2023, these events occurred an average of 20.4 times per year, jumping to 28 in 2023 with total losses of $95.1 billion.
As customers of Houston's CenterPoint Energy experienced earlier this year, resilience planning and preparedness at many utilities are still in their infancy. Hurricane Beryl caused "over 1 million customers to lose power," underscoring "the significant need for resilience investments proposed by companies like CenterPoint," Wei Du, an energy and utilities expert at PA Consulting and a former senior analyst and engineer at Con Edison, told The New York Times after the event.
Andrea Staid, principal technical leader for climate resilience in the electricity sector at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), notes that well-planned resilient systems can better withstand severe weather. New climate modeling and asset performance metrics "can show which utility investments would make previously damaging events go unnoticed." However, EPRI, utilities, and analysts still disagree on the climate and asset performance metrics and methodologies needed to precisely identify vulnerabilities in the power system.
What is a resilience plan?
New frameworks are emerging to guide utility resilience planning. Aditya Ranade, director of energy and sustainable infrastructure at Guidehouse, says: "The industry is moving from responding to single events to mapping financial risk from vulnerabilities and quantifying the benefits of potential investments across four pillars."
Ranade explains that the first pillar is "hazard mapping," identifying threat types from floods to wildfires; "multi-hazard cost-benefit analysis methods are a more sophisticated planning refinement." The second pillar is vulnerability assessment, quantifying asset exposure to climate hazards. "The third pillar is financial risk, which is the sum of the values from hazard mapping and vulnerability assessment"; "the fourth pillar is making adaptation decisions based on comparing benefits, such as replacing wooden poles with composite ones, elevating substations against floods, or using dynamic line ratings."
These pillars can help utilities optimize investments, but final approval "depends on state policymakers or regulators." Ranade adds: "The trade-off between resilience and keeping electricity rates low is decided case by case by state regulators and policymakers." Although no two companies face exactly the same risks, the assessment framework helps companies understand "the specific combination of risks that must be mitigated," says Wei Du of PA Consulting. "Risk data analysis and mitigation measures for different events such as storms and wildfires follow the same framework."
Specific planned mitigation measures include system hardening and technologies that bring situational awareness closer to real time. Planning can also include proactively obtaining more granular local weather data to anticipate affected areas, as well as strengthening engineering standards and building codes to harden infrastructure. Wei Du emphasizes that utilities need to improve "restoration performance as reflected in storm restoration curves"—the steeper the curve, the more customers restored in a shorter time, and the more effective the restoration preparedness.
Judsen Bruzgul, vice president of climate resilience at ICF and senior fellow at the Climate Center, says: "Best practices are emerging around four response dimensions." "Some measures can harden against events, such as undergrounding cables and reinforcing poles," "and some impacts can be absorbed." But for certain events, the only answer is "to limit impacts through faster response because hardening is too costly." "The fourth dimension is investing in resources like microgrids to maintain power for communities and customers," with enough adaptability "to continue addressing new future challenges." Bruzgul adds: "Proactive investment in resilience is often more cost-effective than rebuilding after disasters."
Similar resilience planning frameworks and priority mitigation measures are proposed in new papers from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. But several utilities agree that EPRI's unfinished "Climate Resilience and Adaptation Initiative" (Climate READi) may be the most anticipated assessment tool. EPRI's Staid says that a framework ensuring "science-informed modeling" in climate resilience planning is still lacking, but by 2025, Climate READi will provide "a comprehensive set of climate-informed models for evaluating adaptation investments."
Climate READi will include explicit climate data and metrics, guidance on asset vulnerability, and power system resilience planning. Data-driven comparisons of options—such as hardening assets, deploying new assets, or changing system operations—help prioritize and justify the best resilience investments. Staid emphasizes: "READi will not add new metrics to traditional planning," but will demonstrate "data on increased frequency and severity of extreme events that typically do not appear in resource planning models," and support "planning for multiple climate hazard combinations" to address "diverse regional or system-specific conditions."
Are utilities planning?
According to research released in July by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), regulators in 14 states, including California, Texas, Florida, and New York, have imposed resilience planning requirements on regulated utilities. As of June, at least 30 utilities had submitted resilience plans. Lisa Schwartz, senior energy policy researcher in LBNL's Energy Markets and Policy Department and co-author of the report, says: "Best practices are emerging," "and even without resilience plan requirements, it does not mean utilities are not doing resilience planning." But the study found that current utility resilience planning remains limited.
Josh Schellenberg, another co-author of the report and head of H&S Insights, points out that many resilience plans lack a clear link between identified hazards and planning horizons, "making it difficult to assess how proposed mitigation measures will affect risk." Feedback from five utilities shows varying attitudes: some are waiting for EPRI's Climate READi, some are advancing their own planning tools and data, and others are adopting tools from other research institutions.
Duke Energy's utilities in Florida and the Carolinas are adopting advanced technology, modeling, and self-healing systems as part of a "multi-year grid improvement strategy," says Duke spokesperson Jeff Brooks. The company is also developing "self-healing technology to isolate problems and restore power when outages occur." In 2023, Duke invested over $4 billion in hardening and modernization across its service areas, with "approximately $75 billion" planned over the next decade. Recent rate increases "do reflect these improvements," but the company strives to make increases "predictable and gradual."
Central Hudson Gas and Electric has developed a vulnerability study and resilience plan as required by New York State law, currently under regulatory review, says Jennifer Paull, senior engineer at the company. The plan outlines improvements "to address current climate projections, system conditions, and resilience services from 2025 to 2044." The total funding request for 2025-2029 is approximately $28 million, equivalent to an average annual customer rate increase of only 0.06%. Paull notes that future investments may be larger because storm frequency and intensity are clearly increasing. "There is currently no widely accepted method to compare resilience investments with avoided costs," but "industry initiatives like EPRI Climate READi may change that."
PacifiCorp operates in states with resilience requirements like Utah and states without such requirements like Washington. The company plans to invest over $10 billion in reliability and resilience projects over the next decade, says Josh Jones, vice president of asset management and wildfire strategy. "We do not take rate increases lightly," but "we cannot ignore" the risks and impacts of climate events. Arizona has no state-level resilience requirement, but Arizona Public Service (APS) incorporates resilience into planning, says spokesperson Yessica Del Rincon. The company invests $2 billion annually in "understanding and mitigating risks" to minimize or avoid service interruptions.
Although Washington State has no resilience planning requirement, Puget Sound Energy participates in the three-year EPRI Climate READi program, says David Landers, director of system planning. The company still focuses on near-term planning and awaits EPRI's 2025 guidance because science-based long-term climate impact projections "are not yet mature."
Three unresolved challenges
Utilities, analysts, and LBNL researchers agree that better resilience metrics, estimation of resilience benefits, and cost-benefit analysis of resilience investments still require further research. LBNL's Schellenberg says: "There is no perfect method that optimizes across all factors, but traditional cost-benefit analysis is one way to prioritize investments." "Quantifiable impacts help identify the most valuable resilience investments." However, "quantifying the benefits of resilience investments or justifying the rate increases they may cause is difficult" because the cost of not investing is unknown. But further analysis "of the full range of benefits over longer planning horizons and multiple events may show benefits far exceeding costs," by "preventing catastrophic impacts."
LBNL's Schwartz acknowledges: "Rates have already increased," but "early stakeholder engagement can convey the fact that it's not just about upfront costs; reducing storm impacts is equally important." Resilience plans could become part of integrated distribution system plans and demonstrate "a holistic assessment of all investments affecting customer rates." But "climate risks need frequent assessment, so commissions also need to advance standalone plans." Central Hudson's Paull agrees.
EPRI's Climate READi calls for incorporating climate metrics into all resilience planning decisions, "whether as standalone plans or as part of integrated system plans." Either way, "it will produce more science-based outcomes, thereby improving resilience decisions and performance," Staid concludes.