Climate change adaptation in the Australian electricity sector and the lure of resilience thinking

Abstract

The management of the impacts of climate change on the electricity sector poses a growing challenge, but efforts to model future impacts to plan adaptation have been limited in their delivery of sufficiently usable information. Interviews with stakeholders in the Australian electricity sector about the use of climate science for adaptation reveal that there is recognition of the need for alternatives to the ‘top-down’ application of climate science and conventional modes of risk management in the sector. A more ‘bottom-up’, ‘holistic’ approach that focuses on the resilience of the system is expected to support pragmatic adaptive management of impacts on physical infrastructure and on the communities that depend on power supply. The idea of resilience offers a compelling vision of adaptation for the electricity sector, but our analysis shows that its conceptual baggage and the multiple – and to some extent conflicting – meanings that it connotes may impede the substantive and decisive action that is needed in the face of climate change impacts. We suggest that, if the term continues to be used, stakeholders in the electricity sector in Australia and elsewhere must work to achieve greater clarity about what resilience means in this context, including more specificity about what must be done, and by whom, to manage climate change impacts and enhance resilience.