CCC tells sector to get a grip on cascading climate risks

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has called for a mandatory requirement on utilities to set out the actions they are taking to tackle climate-related risks to their operations.

It comes after energy regulator Ofgem, trade body Water UK, and two water companies failed to respond to the government’s request for resilience plans as part of the Adaptation Reporting Power (ARP) process. This enables government to inspect reports on climate preparedness from key infrastructure providers.

Of the more than 100 organisations asked to contribute, one-in-five failed to do so – with South Staffs and SES Water among those listed as not having responded in the CCC’s report on the process.

Across the board, the CCC identified an improvement in reporting since the last round in 2016 but said gaps remain, including linking adaptation action to risks, with clear ownership and timescales for action. It also pointed to what it calls infrastructure interdependencies, citing the knock-on impacts of the power cuts resulting from Storm Arwen.

Its recommendations for the next round of reporting including making submissions mandatory and having a wider range of participants, including canals and reservoirs.

All electricity and gas networks submitted a report for the most recent ARP, with the Energy Networks Association also filing a sector summary. Energy UK filed a report covering 11 generators.

The electricity networks were praised for linking actions to risks and rated ‘medium’ for the range of climate scenarios on display; assigning timescales to actions and describing their approach to monitoring and evaluation. UK Power Networks was highlighted as an example in linking actions to risks.

The five gas networks scored high for linking actions to risks and monitoring and evaluation, medium for the range of climate scenarios and low for timescales (only one report allocated timescales to individual actions).

The 14 water organisations that responded, only covering England, scored high on all categories but timescales, where they were rated medium. Anglian Water’s approach to quantifying risk and monitoring progress stood out as a leader, the CCC said.

Introducing its report on the latest reporting round, the CCC’s Adaptation Committee chair, Baroness Brown, said: “Climate change poses a catalogue of risks to UK infrastructure. In this report we’ve uncovered a key gap in the country’s national adaptation planning: to varying degrees the organisations we have assessed are not prepared for cascading infrastructure failures. For example, a flood might damage an electricity substation which has a knock-on effect on the transport network due to a power outage. These dependencies, if disrupted, have potentially devastating consequences. The government needs to help reporting organisations better understand and manage these risks. Prudent planning today can help avoid a domino-effect of failures in the future.”