In 2025, the world saw record-breaking wildfires in Los Angeles, millions displaced by Hurricane Melissa, and the hottest summers on record in Japan and Korea. These events capped the hottest decade ever measured, with temperatures up approximately 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit from the pre-industrial average. Across many sectors, companies and governments are confronting a difficult truth: Climate impacts can no longer be avoided. As extreme weather becomes more frequent, the focus of climate conversations is shifting away from stalled mitigation efforts and toward adaptation and resilience.

From 2000 to 2023, over 80% of major power outages were caused by extreme weather events. These impacts will only accelerate as the grid buckles under stresses it wasn’t designed to withstand. Increasingly, the question is not why utilities should adapt to climate impacts, but how and when. 

Turning competing priorities into complementary ones

The United States has an outstandingly reliable power system. Electricity is almost always available, thanks to decades of standards designed to ensure there is always enough capacity to meet demand. But reliability measures performance on a good day. Resilience, meanwhile, measures the ability of the power system to prepare for, adapt to, withstand, and recover rapidly from disasters on the worst ones. 

Resilience became part of the grid conversation in the mid-2010s, when major storms like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy exposed the limits of aging infrastructure and the risks of regional long-duration outages. The 2018 Camp Fire, which ignited after a live wire broke free from a 99-year-old metal hook on an outdated transmission tower, leveled an entire town, killed 85 people, and bankrupted PG&E. Without proactive hardening and modernization, a single failure can have catastrophic consequences.

Yet utilities face a deluge of competing priorities: keeping up with surging data center demand, replacing aging infrastructure, performing routine maintenance, and keeping bills affordable for customers whose energy burdens are rising. In that crowded lineup, resilience often slides to the wayside. But it shouldn’t. The smartest way to protect the grid is to integrate resilience into work utilities already have to do so that investments simultaneously improve reliability, lower costs, and support electrification. This is increasingly possible with streamlined, strategic resilience planning and new technologies that help utilities optimize investment benefits.

Develop a resilience plan

A resilience plan outlines strategic investments and activities that are needed to increase resilience within a system over time. These plans are proliferating among utilities, ushered along by regulations in some states and a growing library of guidance, such as EPRI’s Climate READi Framework. From May 2022 to June 2024, at least 30 utilities in the United States filed formal resilience plans. 

But the real challenge isn’t whether utilities should plan for resilience; it’s how to encourage them to make smart, phased investments that balance near-term affordability with long-term risk. The case to invest today is strong:Every $1 spent on infrastructure resilience saves $13 in damages, cleanup, and economic impacts.

These investments, though, must be weighed against current affordability pressures. California’s three major investor-owned utilities have seen wildfire-related costs jump from 2% of annual revenue in 2019 to 16% in 2022, an unsustainable trajectory for both utilities and ratepayers. 

Strong resilience plans go beyond cataloguing risks. They pinpoint which assets need hardening, where redundancy is most valuable, and when targeted upgrades can prevent expensive failures. The trick is matching the right resilience solution to the risk, which can be done by integrating resilience with other utility investments. 

Harden strategically 

The power system is in desperate need of a makeover. In the next five years, utilities are planning nearly $1 trillion in grid investment. To date, hardening has gotten the majority of utilities’ investment. Physical upgrades— like replacing wooden poles with steel and undergrounding lines in high fire risk areas — enhance reliability, resilience, and efficiency.

But without strategic prioritization, costs passed to ratepayers can spiral, disproportionately affecting low-income, disadvantaged communities who already experience more frequent outages. Because more than 72% of utilities in the U.S. are investor-owned, utilities have a “perverse incentive” to propose capital projects with high expenditures that reduce operating costs. 

Physical upgrades fit this model, but they are not always the cheapest or most efficient solution. For example, a recent study found that enabling fast-trip settings to quickly cut power when faults occur mitigates wildfire risk more cost-effectively than undergrounding power lines or extensive vegetation management. 

Invest in faster, smarter emergency response

Preventing damage is only part of the resilience equation. Restoring service quickly when outages inevitably occur is essential. As extreme weather intensifies, utilities are increasingly relying on planned outages, or Public Safety Power Shutoffs, to prevent equipment from starting fires and using smart grid technologies to optimize workflows and streamline maintenance.

Companies like Technosylva, AiDash, and Rhizome use artificial intelligence to monitor wildfire risk in real time, helping utilities issue more targeted power shutoffs. Smart grid technologies with sensors, automation, and advanced analytics give utilities the ability to identify failing equipment, improve worker safety, and enable faster and more efficient emergency response.

Utilize distributed energy to strengthen resilience

Distributed energy resources including solar, battery storage, and microgrids are widely heralded as a way to improve resilience. However, they’ve become the center of contentious debates over equity, utility revenue models, and renewable grid integration. Critics point out that DERs can shift costs to low-income households who cannot afford them, reduce electricity sales, and create technical challenges for a grid designed for one-way power flows. 

These challenges are significant, but they shouldn’t distract us from the bigger picture. DERs work, and as extreme weather events accelerate, we need more of them. DERs offer reliable backup power and, in many cases, are now cheaper than fossil fuels. 

Other countries understand this. China and much of Europe are scaling renewable power for economic competitiveness and energy security, not climate goals. For example, during Hurricane Melissa, rooftop solar allowed residents in Jamaica to charge their phones and keep refrigerators running, proving the use of a DER can benefit entire communities.

Integrate resilience now or risk falling behind

Climate impacts will continue to intensify despite current political rhetoric. Resilience is no longer a fleeting concern; it’s moving rapidly toward the top of the grid modernization agenda. Efforts like EPRI’s Climate READi program are helping the build out of comprehensive, science-based approaches to assess climate risks and prioritize investments. This growing focus on resilience will be front and center at the first-ever Power Resilience Forum this week, hosted by Latitude Media and the Ad Hoc Group.

The message for utilities is clear: Resilience can’t simply be layered on top of traditional planning. Whether it’s directing investments toward the highest-risk assets, deploying technologies that enhance energy efficiency and electrification, or delivering more affordable and reliable power, utilities can define the future of clean energy in a warming world.

Sonia Aronson is a project manager at Gridware. The opinions represented in this contributed article are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Latitude Media or any of its staff.

The post Resilience is having a moment. What does that mean for utilities? appeared first on Latitude Media.

via Latitude Media https://ift.tt/oLqEPXz