Many parts of the US have experienced brutal, deadly heat in recent weeks—and there's plenty of summer left. Intense rainfall, made more likely by warming, dropped more than 15 inches of rain in central Texas, claiming more than 130 lives. In addition to the devastating human toll these weather events take, they expose critical vulnerabilities in our energy infrastructure.
Power grids are seeing tremendous demand from air conditioning, not to mention other factors including data centers. And of course, extreme weather events cause shocks that go well beyond power outages; they damage transmission lines and cascade across other critical infrastructure like water systems and healthcare facilities.
The question isn't whether climate change is reshaping energy security—it's how quickly we can adapt. As traditional definitions of national security expand to include climate threats, what will it take to build truly resilient energy systems.
This week, Bill Loveless speaks with Kate Guy about how extreme summer weather events are redefining energy security.
Kate is a senior fellow and managing director of the geopolitics of climate change and the energy transition at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia SIPA.
Credits: Hosted by Jason Bordoff and Bill Loveless. Produced by Mary Catherine O'Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee. Engineering by Gregory Vilfranc.