Working-draft chapter from:

LIVING WITH TIGERS: HOW TO SURVIVE A WARMING PLANET

(in progress)

by Rob Verchick*

*
Gauthier-St. Martin Chair in Environmental Law, Loyola University New Orleans; Senior Fellow in Disaster
Resilience Leadership, Tulane University; J.D., Harvard University 1989; A.B., Stanford University 1986.
 Robert R. Verchick 2016

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

The World in a Cage

Adapt or Die
Did We Do That?
The Tide Is High
A Hard Rain
Bridge Under Troubled Water
Lights Out
The Master of Reason
Pour Me a Drink
Fever
Grapes of Wrath
Experience Your America
Hacking the Climate
Living with Tigers

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 Please do not cite or quote without permission.

Chapter 7

Lights Out

When I dream about Hurricane Katrina (and I still do), it always starts with the
refrigerators. Kenmore, GE, Whirlpool, Frigidaire, Amana. Hundreds of thousands
of these abandoned appliances stood duct-taped shut on the curbs and yards of
homes throughout New Orleans. Many were spray-painted with whimsical or
forbidding messages. Funky. Not in a good way. Free Beer and Maggots.
Smells like FEMA. The Bowels of Hell await you within!!
In my dream there are no people, just endless lines of aluminum tombstones
planted in muck, leaning this way and that. Theres a hot breeze and the whole
neighborhood smells like low tide times ten. Dragonflies are buzzing everywhere.
I think about going inside the house, but its more than 100 degrees in there. Theres
no air conditioning: the powers been out for weeks.
Katrina refrigerators (its a thing, Google it) are not the only or even the most
dramatic example of the perils of power outages in extreme weather. But that meme
is what haunts me, of course, because I lived it. In any case, the scene is less abstract
than the loss of 10,000 fish representing more than 530 species at the citys
famous Aquarium of the Americas, and less torturous than the chaos at Memorial
hospital where flood waters marooned dozens of elderly patients on sweat-soaked
bed sheets, without electricity or running water, until they were finally rescued or
died. (Investigations showed that some patients had been injected with a
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 combination of lethal drugs, that is, apparently euthanized by their caregivers. One
doctor and two nurses were charged with second-degree murder, but a grand jury
found no probable cause to indict them.)
The icebox fiasco brings levity too. When an appliance-disposal worker was
interviewed about the smelly job of emptying abandoned refrigerators of their
oozing contents, he spoke a few words about wind direction and shrugged, Im a
retired mortician, so it dont bother me much.
From rancid food to emergency-room nightmares, communities take a punch
when the lights go out. The nations aging power grid leaves us more susceptible
to such risks. And the growing intensity of floods and storms on account of climate
change make things even worse. Americas experiences with Hurricane Katrina
and, later, Superstorm Sandy convince me that the power sector needs to become
smarter and more resilient, even as it struggles to cut carbon emissions. But finding
the way forward is difficult. The power grid was never really designed to be nimble
and spry. Instead, it was meant to be static and stable. The system is amazingly
complicated in the way it balances supply and demand, yet at the same time its
simple in concept.
To explain to my students how the electricity grid works, I go to the whiteboard
and draw a cartoon image of an old-fashioned bathtub. Imagine, I tell them, that the
tub is filled to the brim with water, and the goal is to keep it that way. The water
represents all the electricity available on any one of the nations three electricity
networks (one for the western half of the country, one for the eastern half, and one
just for TexasIm not kidding.) Theres a big drain at the bottom of the tub, and
its always open, forever funneling energy out of the system. That drain is us, users
of all shapes and sizeshouseholds, hospitals, Amazon server farms, and more.
Without a full tub, we wont get our shares on time, so we need bucket brigades
lined up around the tub constantly pouring more and more energy into the bath. (It
is here that a student will joke about Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerers Apprentice,
but lets dodge that now.) Maintaining the equilibriumthe waterline in the
tubis extremely important for the process to work smoothly and reliably. If one

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 bucket brigade trips up or collapses, that team must be hauled out and replaced with
another one immediately. Those brigades, who represent facilities like power
plants, hydroelectric dams, and wind farms, we will call the generators.
Since the days of Westinghouse and Edison, the relationship between
generators, networks, and users has been pretty straightforward. But the
arrangement is now quickly changing. Localized technologies like rooftop-solar
generation now allows users to also act as generators. Digital systems embedded in
transmission networks can now influence how much power commercial users
request at certain times or how much power generators will produce, giving the
network some characteristics of the user and the generator. These hybrid roles are
already making it harder for the government to regulate such new relationships and
to fold them into a national plan. Then we have the wildcard impacts of climate
changesea-level rise, soaring heat, souped-up storms, and more. Weve got
tigers in the tank, but not the good kind. As weve seen previously, these threats
are expected to grow over the next century. And all of them put the electricity
supply chain at risk.
Start with generation. When Superstorm Sandy walloped New York City, one
third of its electric generating capacity was knocked out of service. Thats not a
surprise when you consider that Gothams gas-fired power plants are all hunkered
on the waterfront, some left over from the Lindsay years. Because of that and
transmission failures (37 percent of the citys substations are prone to flooding),
two million New Yorkers lost power by the time the storm had passed.
But low-lying power plants serve not only New Orleans and New York, but
also Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, and more. According to a report
commissioned by the Union of Concerned Scientists, some 100 electric facilities
in the contiguous United States, including power plants and substations, are sited
within four feet of local high tide. And as sea levels continue to rise, the risks to
these facilities from storm surge and floods will also increase.
Why are so many power plants near the coast? The question reminds me of the
time, many years ago, that I visited a nuclear power plant in Forsmark, Sweden, on

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 the Baltic Sea. Having inspected the plants Lego-like containment structures,
rambled through fluorescent-lit labs, and even descended a kilometer underground
to view the plants radioactive waste repository, we legal academics were all duly
impressed. At the end, our host, a mild and soft-spoken Swedish engineer,
concluded the tour with an observation so modest and wry that only a Swedish
engineer as mild and soft-spoken as he could ever successfully pull off. My
friends, he said, what we have witnessed here is just a very complicated way to
boil water.
This actually is a very important point. In truth, most of the ways we generate
electricityfrom burning carbon to splitting atomsare just complicated ways to
boil water. The boiling water makes steam, and the steam rotates turbines to
produce electricity. And however you do this, the process requires lots and lots of
water, not just to have something to boil, but to cool the steam so that it can be
condensed back into a liquid and boiled again. Thats why Swedens Forsmark
plant is located on the Baltic Sea, an endless source of liquid coolant. And thats
why so many U.S. power plants of all kinds recline on low-lying coasts. The irony:
the seaside location that makes power generation so practical is exactly the
characteristic that in the no-analog future will make it so vulnerable.
But surge and storm are not the only big challenges for steam-generating power
plants (also called thermal power plants). Energy experts worry about heat and
water scarcity. Between 2006 and 2013, researchers have found dozens of instances
in which power plants were compromised either because there was not enough
water or the water was too warm. Most failures occurred in the summer when
households needed electricity most. For instance, in the summer of 2012, water
levels at Iowas Cedar River fell so low that operators at the Duane Arnold nuclear
plant had to dredge the river to corral enough water. Summer droughts in 2007 and
2008 put Wyomings Laramie River Station, a coal-fired power plant, at risk of
shutting down for lack of water. Officials had to divert water from farmers in order
to avoid rolling blackouts. In August 2012, the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in
Connecticut was required to power down a reactor because water pumped from the

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 Long Island Sound was too warm to cool the steam, resulting in several million
dollars of loss. Three times in the last decade the Tennessee Valley Authority was
forced to shut down Alabamas Browns Ferry nuclear plant because the used
cooling water was too hot to discharge in the already overheated river without
threatening ecological damage. Again, many millions of dollars were lost. Overall,
experts say about a quarter of existing thermal power plants are in counties that by
2030 will be prone to high-to-moderate water supply problems.
All this is enough to make you wonder if boiling liquid to spin turbines might
be a bit overrated. Renewable technologies like hydroelectric power, solar energy,
and wind power surely have big advantages in the no-analog future. We will get to
those. But climate-change impacts will also test the resilience of some renewable
technologies. Hydroelectric plants, which are powered by waters rushing through
penstocks and spinning turbines, are very sensitive to changes in rain patterns and
evaporation rates. In a later chapter well take a look at the withering conditions at
Lake Mead, which funnels water from the Colorado River through seventeen
enormous generators at Hoover Dam. Were the lake to completely dry up (a
plausible scenario), more than a million people would need to get their power from
somewhere else. (Twenty million people rely on the lake for water, which, of
course is another story.) Solar energy seems like a natural in these feverish times,
but most studies expect solar capacity to decrease 20 percent, on account of of
increased cloud cover and production inefficiencies associated with extreme
temperatures. As for wind power, the overall climate effect remains uncertain.
Scientists know that higher temperatures can change regional wind patterns, but the
results are hard to forecast. Wind power in west Texas could be a great idea, until
its not.
Youll notice that we are only talking about the electricity part of the energy
supply chain, not fuel production, storage, and transportation. Oil, of course,
powers most of our cars and trucks, a use that represents about half of the energy
consumption in the United States. As for the other halfelectricity usemost of
that relies on traditional fuels of one kind or another, whether natural gas, coal,

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 biomass, or oil. Extracting those fuels and getting them in usable form to either the
gas station or the power plant will also be more difficult because of climate change.
The Gulf Coast, for instance, accommodates nearly 4,000 oil-and-gas platforms,
which together produce about half of the countrys petroleum. The structures are
vulnerable to disruption by high winds storm surges (Hurricane Katrina, alone,
destroyed one hundred such platforms). Many of them were, of course, never
designed with permanent sea-level rise in mind. Half of the nations refining
capacity is also located on the Gulf Coast and is vulnerable in similar ways. Up in
Alaska, the thawing of the permafrost, which provides purchase for heavy trucks
and machinery, has already cut short exploration seasons in some places. (On the
bright side, the U.S. Global Change Research Program believes melting sea ice
could open new routes for oil tankers in the Arctic Basin.)
In the Lower 48, fuel storage facilities, such as aboveground tanks, underground
salt caverns, and aquifers, are at risk to climate-related flooding and more. Plus, the
networks we use to transport fuelthe navigation channels, the railways, the
pipelineswill face many of the problems described in the previous chapter. This
chapter focuses on the power grid, but there really is a lot more to worry about
energy-wise, as the federal government and the multi-nationals now freely admit.
Once the electricity is generated, all those electrons have to be moved by high-
voltage transmission cables within and across states before they finally dance into
your home. (And they are dancing, with each atom of the transmission cable
absorbing an electron and throwing off another onea choreography that repeats
itself trillions of times, right through the wall outlet and the filament of your
incandescent light bulb, which you shouldnt have, but probably still do.)
Now, when it gets too hot, those uninsulated, high-voltage transmission cables
stretching miles across the American landscape can sag. In the 1930s my
grandfather hung power lines in the Arizona desert, and this is one of many small
truths he passed on to me as a child. But I never understood why it happened or
how it mattered until I began researching climate change.

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 As for the why, sagging is a matter of simple physics. The cableswhich are
made either entirely of aluminum, or of steel surrounded by aluminumlose their
rigidity as they heat up. The heat is a product of the high electrical current and the
ambient temperature. When the metal simmers long enough, the cables go limp.
Its a common enough occurrence, but not without downsides. To begin with, hot
cables are less efficient. The metals electrical resistance increases with the heat
and this makes it harder for the current to push through the lines. In perfect
conditions, transmission lines already lose about 7 percent of the energy they
transmit, but this loss climbs quickly with the temperature. Think about the
temperature summer spikes climate change is already causing and add that too a
soaring energy demand necessitated by more air conditioning, and you begin to see
the problem. In this punishing environment, the more the workhorse works, the
more tired and less efficient it becomes.
More harrowing, is the possibility of a flashover, in which a cables high-
voltage electricity arcs, or jumps, to a nearby tree or other grounded object,
shutting down the system and causing fire and explosion. On one hot August
afternoon in 2003, a sagging power line in northern Ohio grazed an overgrown tree
and did just that. An alarm that should have notified network operators didnt. Three
more flashovers occurred shortly thereafter, and the additional current was forced
onto a grid too weak to accept it. In a matter of minutes, power plants began failing
throughout the Midwest, and in less than two hours the entire system had collapsed.
In Canada and eight northeastern states, fifty million people lost power for days,
for some even weeks. Experts attribute eleven deaths to to the event and economic
losses of $6 billion. To this day, the 2003 Northeastern Blackout was the largest
power outage in U.S. history and the second largest in the world.
But its not just about sag. Storms and wildfire also pose serious threats to the
power grid. Since 2000 weather-related disruptions like these have been getting
worse. In 2012, to name one example, an epic band of thunderstorms (known as a
derecho) killed the lights for nearly 4 million residents across the Midwest and Mid-
Atlantic coast. Uncontrolled blazes will of course incinerate transmission poles or

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 cause trees to knock them down. But the greatest risk comes from all the smoke
and ash, which ionizes the surrounding air, giving it an electric charge. In what
is basically another version of a flashover, the ionized air creates an electrical
pathway that allows a current to leap from a transmission line and crash the
network. In just this way, the 2011 Las Conchas wildfire in New Mexico nearly
debilitated two high-voltage transmission lines carrying power to 400,000
customers. In California, energy experts worry that more frequent and intense
wildfires will put a large share of transmission equipment at risk. Some major
transmission lines in the state are said to face a 40 percent higher probability of
wildfire exposure by the end of the century.
On top of all this, climate change could lead to dramatic shifts in electricity
demandthe big drain at the bottom of the energy bathtub. Rising temperatures
will increase the need for space cooling in many parts of the country. But they will
also reduce the need the for space heating in some places too. For that reason, the
overall increase in energy consumption attributed to climate change may be as
small as 5 percent. But much of the countrys heating comes from non-electrical
sources, like heating oil and natural gas, while cooling is almost all electric. The
Department of Energys Argonne National Laboratory estimates that meeting
increased need for electricity that is attributable to climate change would require 34
gigawatts of additional power by 2050, the rough equivalent of 70 new gas-fired
power plants.
Everyone relies on the drum beat of plentiful, reliable, affordable power. But
when things go wrong, it is the poor and otherwise disadvantaged who suffer most.
As a scholar who studies disaster injustice, I know the landscape. Studies
consistently show, for instance, that in disasters of all kinds, poor people and people
of color are more likely to suffer property damage, bodily injury, and death. Power
outages discriminate in this way by stealing the most necessary services from
populations who depend on them the most. Think of all of the things we lose when
we lose power: light, temperature control, drinking water, sewage disposal, food
storage, medicine storage, transportation, communication, hospital careeven, as

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 one study notes, the ability to maintain mental health. Post-traumatic stress
disorder, to name one condition, is common in many kinds of disaster situations.
We all need these things, but some populations are more dependent and less able to
find substitutes when familiar supports are cut off. (When I lived in Kansas City,
Missouri, many years ago, it wasnt unusual for ice storms to knock out power for
a day or more in some parts of the city. Big hotels and office buildings were
generally spared, so residents who could would check into the Westin or camp out
in their offices. But, obviously, many more couldnt do this.)
Much of the literature on power outages focuses on hospital services. The
tribulations at New Orleans Memorial hospital, mentioned earlier, make the point.
Researchers have cataloged an array of impacts in hospitals related to blackouts,
including disruptions to direct clinical care, cleaning and sterilizing processes,
patient record keeping, transportation systems, and emergency communications. At
the same time, when power goes out in a city, the demand for hospital service
skyrockets. These problems obviously affect certain populations more: the
disabled, the chronically ill, the very young, and the elderly.
Other important disparities are related to heat extremes in crowded cities.
Despite the impression you get from all those wind-battered weather announcers
on the local news, heatwaves are a much more lethal weather-related killer. Every
year in the United States, hundreds die from such events. In July, 1995, a searing
heat wave in Chicago, killed 739 people, roughly seven times as many as died in
Superstorm Sandy. The impact can be particularly severe in dense urban areas,
where asphalt and concrete surfaces absorb heat and tree cover is sparse. Because
of this phenomenon, known as the heat-island effect, the annual average air
temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be 1.8 degrees to 5.4 degrees
warmer than its surroundings. In a survey of more than 304 metropolitan areas,
researchers from the University of California at Berkeley found that African
Americans were 52 percent more likely than whites to live in such densely packed
neighborhoods, while Asians were 32 percent more likely, and Hispanics 21 percent
more likely to live in such areas.

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 Blackouts during a heat wave are especially dangerous for anyone living in a
heat island, particularly the elderly and the disabled. Imagine being trapped in a
sweltering high-rise building with an inoperable elevator and no tap water because
the pumping equipment has failed. Now imagine the phone network is down and
you cant call for help. Given future trends in population growth and urbanization
these problems are likely to increase.
The many ways experts identify to improve the grid basically fall into four
categories: hardening, smartening, renewing, and reducing. Hardening refers to
measures that protect equipment from weather-related damage. That could mean
building levees, restoring protective marshes, elevating substations, burying
distribution lines, or even trimming trees near high-voltage cables. Installing diesel
backup generators in buildings and homes fit in this category too. For instance,
Pacific Gas and Electric, in northern California, is working with state and federal
agencies to restore bay habitat to dampen tides near shoreline facilities. The
company uses new dry cooling technology in two of its natural-gas plants to
minimize water needs. Florida Power and Light now actively monitors climate-
change-based flood risk at its Turkey Point nuclear facility on Biscayne Bay. The
current power plant is elevated 18 feet above sea level, and all equipment is shielded
against waves up to 22 feet. The companys plans to build two new reactors on the
site will take into account long-term projections on sea-level rise, hurricane surge,
riverine floods, tsunami hazard, and dam failure.
Smartening would increase the energy networks flexibility and responsiveness
by capturing the promise of various so-called smart grid technologies so that
nodes in the electricity network can communicate in real time with one another and
respond to new circumstances or needs. If a tornado knocks out the transformer at
a gas plant, the smart grid swiftly pulls more power from the wind farm. When
triple-degree temperatures threaten a citys elderly population, smart switches in
the smart grid assign priority to hospitals and cooling stations where electricity is
needed most. Had this technology existed in northern Ohio in 2003, a handful of
flashovers and a faulty alarm would not have left 50 million people hunting for

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 candles and matches. Instead, computer-driven switches would have detected the
failures and instantly adjusted the flow of electricity to isolate problems and redirect
power to the parts of the grid that could handle it safely. Smart technology can also
allow electricity to move back and forth, supplying a home with power from the
gas plant in the evening, and allowing the homes rooftop solar panels to send
surplus power to other users during the day. Cities now using smart-grid
technology, like Chattanooga, Tennessee, not only report fewer outages, they save
customers money over time.
Renewable energy sources dont just reduce carbon dioxide emissionsthey
appear far less vulnerable to extreme weather. This is because they arent dependent
on external supplies of fuel or water and because they rely on simpler mechanical
systems that are more compatible with natural processes. Thats particularly true of
wind and solar. For instance, while broiling in a Texas heat wave in 2011, wind
generators helped keep the lights on when several gas and coal plants were forced
to shut down. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, ISO New England, which operates
electricity transmission in the affected six-state area, received not a single report of
damage to the networks many wind turbines and solar facilities. The five-turbine
Jersey Atlantic Wind Project, off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey, took a
direct hit from the storm, but was back producing power hours after it had passed.
Finally, energy-efficiency programs that reduce electricity demand help lighten
the load on the grid, making it more flexible and resilient. Not coincidentally, they
also lower carbon emissions, which helps slow global warming.
Like many challenges associated with climate change, the problem here isnt a
lack of smart technology; its a lack of smart policy. Decisions about land use, fuel
choice, transmission technology, and consumer incentives are too fractured and
decentralized. Theres also an incentives problem. Normally, we would say the
owner of a profit-based facility doesnt need outside prodding to invest in resilience
because the avoidance of future damage to the property and of lost profits is, itself,
the incentive. But neither climate change nor energy markets are normal in this
way.Because there is so much uncertainty in climate-change forecasts, owners

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 may prefer research over action even when, logically, they shouldnt. In addition,
the plant owner and the public will probably value energy assets differently. For
the owner, the cost of a damaged plant is measured in repairs and lost profits; it
makes no economic sense to invest in resilience strategies beyond those potential
losses. (Some of those losses will be insured against anyway.) But to the public, a
damaged plant can mean the loss of peoples homes, jobs, and lives. With stakes
that high, we understandably want investments in resilience that are higher than
what the owner would do on his or her own.
All that said, glimmers of policy progress are out there. Recently, the New York
Public Service Commission ordered Con Edison to use state-of-the-art measures to
protect its electric, gas, and steam systems from the effects of climate change. The
decision requires the utility to follow through with an ongoing climate-change
vulnerability study and set an interim standard for the elevation of critical
infrastructure, adding three feet of freeboard to the Federal Emergency
Management Agencys existing structural standards for 100-year flood plains.
So, too, Svensk Krnbrnslehantering, the Swedish company that owns the
Forsmark nuclear plant has begun examining its long term risks . (According to the
companys recent assessment, a moderate amount of sea-level rise by next century
would not threaten Forsmarks operations, but at least one plausible worst-case
scenario could swamp the facilities, bringing very serious consequences.)
At this point, I wanted to know about the energy company that delivers power
to my wall sockets. Like all New Orleanians, I write my checks to Entergy
Corporation, the private company that generates, transmits, and distributes
electricity throughout much of the Southeast. Its transmission and distribution
infrastructure along the Gulf Coast is famously vulnerable to land subsidence, sea
level rise, and hurricanes.
In 2007, Entergy launched an initiative to locate and quantify all of its climate
risks on the Gulf Coast and to identify sensible approaches to surviving, perhaps
even thriving, in the no-analog future. To design future scenarios, the company
consulted with climate scientists and considered subsidence maps developed at

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 NASA. They examined the sea-level-rise projections from the IPCCs Fourth
Assessment but found them too sanguine; they chose instead the more cautious
estimates of Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research. To model future hazards and probabilities, they enlisted experts from the
global insurance giant Swiss Re. Combining statistical data, theories of cyclone
dynamics, and powerful computer simulations, researchers created an event set
of plausible hurricane activity in the Gulf over a 10,000-years time line. The
exercise produced iterations of cyclone tracks, many of which had probably never
occurred in reality, but, which according to the companys report, may occur in
the future.
The next step was to march that parade of plausible hurricanes through the Gulf
Coast region, an area that included 800 zip codes, 77 counties and parishes, and
about 12 million people. (For various reasons, Florida was not included.) The
findings were assembled in a 2010 joint report issued by Entergy and Americas
Wetland Foundation (AWF), an organization devoted to protecting environmental
and economic interests in the Gulf.
The result is best summed up as terrifying.
When you add up all the physical assets in the Gulfthe residences, businesses,
farms, fisheries, factories, utilities, and more, the total can be valued at about $2
trillion, with a likelihood of it reaching $3 trillion by 2030. About 13 percent of the
current value is owned by electric utilities and another 21 percent by the oil and gas
industry. To get an idea, were talking about more than half a million miles of power
lines, hundreds of power plants, and 50,000 oil and gas structures like pipelines
and wells. (By comparison, residential properties, which make up 37 percent of all
value, just slightly exceed the combined value of these energy investments.)
Already, the area loses an average of $14 billion annually because of storms and
land subsidence. Going forward, in a world without climate change, the average
annual loss would be expected to hit $18 billion by 2030. With climate change,
Entergys report estimated an average annual loss of $26 billion by 2030 and up to
$40 billion by 2050. Yes, thats $40 billion lost every year until the end of . . . well,

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 until the end of something. On that, well have to wait for a later chapter. Over the
next 20 years, Entergy estimates that storm loss along the Gulf Coast could
approach $350 billion. To place this in context, the report explains, this amount
could be used to re-build the entire asset base in New Orleans approximately six
times over.
Is there anything we can do about this?
To find out, I visited the CEO of Entergy-New Orleans, Charles Rice, at his
office in downtown New Orleans. (Entergy-New Orleans, known as ENO, is one
of Entergys seven subsidiaries.) Rice is a sharp dresser and has a compact, athletic
build. He wears a Fitbit and a pair of shiny Omega Psi Phi cufflinks, a reminder of
his college days at Howard University. To aid our discussion, he tells me, hes
going to loop in a colleague, Steve Tullos by speaker-phone. Tullos is Entergys
Senior Manager of Environmental Strategy and Policy. Rice tells me one of the
most important things Entergy can do is to avoid the worst climate impacts by
reducing carbon emissions. This, my research shows, is something Entergy is
considered a leader in. In 2001, Entergy became the first utility to cut carbon
emissions by 20 percent of 2000 levels. We have the cleanest fleet in the country,
Rice says.
Tullos adds that adaptation is also a big priority. But the task is enormous.
Entergys report lays out decades worth of projects important to the survivability
of the communities and businesses there now. More than 200 miles of beaches need
replenishing, one thousand square miles of protective wetland must be restored,
scores of neighborhoods elevated, new building codes implemented, and much
more. A large chunk of the work will involve public spending, though people can
wrangle about the details. For their part, the authors of the AWF/Entergy report
recommend total spending of $120 billion over the next 20 years, with a little over
60 percent coming from private sources. Everyone needs to see this as our
problem, Tullos says. Then Rice: Everybody has to stack cans.
In the department of can-stacking, Entergy is again recognized as an industry
leader. The companys formal vulnerability assessment is rarity and has been

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 praised by industry and governmental officials alike. While many of the
recommendations are expensive, others are less so. And all are intended to offset
even greater losses over the long-term. Tullos explains that Entergy identified a
number of resiliency measures that today seem like no-brainersreplacing wooden
transmission poles with steel, for instance, elevating substations, and water-
proofing sensitive electronic equipment. ENOs gas-fired plant near Chalmette is
being armored to withstand a 100-year storm. Already Entergy has experienced less
infrastructure damage after storms and has restored power to customers more
quickly. Tullos seems particularly proud of Entergys involvement in coastal
restoration efforts, describing an impressive initiative to reforest the swamps by
showering them with millions of mangrove seeds from crop dusters.
I ask who instigated all this, the economic assessment, the steel poles, the
mangroves. Katrina and Rita, Tullos says, smiling through the phones speaker.
I should have seen that line coming. For after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita caused
unprecedented damage to Entergys power network, after contingents of power
lines fell, substations drowned, power plants croaked, and customers fled, ENO
filed for bankruptcy. (Rice was not in charge then.) Like so many things in this
irrepressible city, ENO bounced back. But managers at Entergy and its war-weary
subsidiaries now view this part of the world differently. Everyone saw the need,
says Tullos.
At first, he says the focus was on storm preparation, but soon the mission
expanded to include environmental resilience of many kinds. Climate change is
part of that equation, but not all of it, particularly in a states where many customers
(and voters) dismiss the concept. Take climate out of this, he says, referring to
the political debate. Were going to have to prepare. Lets not look at the why.
Things are changing. There is something to this. You have to meet people where
they are. And Entergys research suggests that half of future asset vulnerability will
be driven by economic growth in risky areas and by land subsidence that is
unrelated to climate change. But Tullos knows it is necessary for decision makers
to know the climate science too. How else could you size-up the total risk? How

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 else would you have any idea whether an expensive investment was actually good
enough?
Pursuing energy resilience in what may be the most vulnerable part of the
continent requires massive upfront costs. I ask Rice how Entergy might recoup
some of its expenses. In a region saddled with above-average poverty and below-
average concern for climate change, the circle is obviously hard to square.
What can our customers afford? he asks. That factors into every decision we
make. I think of the people I see everyday in my neighborhood who depend on
electricity that is plentiful, reliable, and affordable: The owner of the Latin grocery,
with freezers full of Rocket Pops, tamales, and butchered pork; the clutch of middle
schoolers at the bus stop, texting updates to their parents; and the chatty lady with
sequined support hose who motors her electric scooter across four lanes of traffic
every morning to buy a scone and a tall drip at the caf where I write. A significant
number of our customers, Rice says with emphasis, live at or below the poverty
line. (In New Orleans, the poverty rate is 28 percentabout twice the rate for the
United States as a whole.)
What about the ratemaking process that was used in New York? There the
Public Service Commission not only pressed for resilience upgrades but imposed
the rate structure sensitive to customer affordability. Rice inspects his fingernails,
then: We need a commission that is progressive. And perhaps, I think, a citizenry
more understanding of how hard it is every night to pull off one of the greatest
magic tricks of all time: an electrical grid that is at once plentiful, reliable, and
affordable. When I ask Rice about his biggest worry in the no-analog future, he
doesnt think twice. Customer expectations, he says. In rural Arkansas a two-
week outage is tolerated. In the city of New Orleans a four-day outage is intolerable.
They dont care if its caused by climate change or anything else. They want a
system thats storm-ready, storm-hardened. Some day, experts say that advanced
battery technology will be able to buffer us from blackouts by continuing to supply
power stored in giant batteries integrated into distribution networks or smaller
batteries installed in peoples homes. But for now, outage prevention is the best

16
 medicine.
And so were back to the storms and to the thousands of square miles of eroding
wetlands that are still the best, perhaps only, hope of protecting that $2 trillion set
of investments and the 12 million people that go with them. Entergy is sowing a
mangrove forest and doing many other things too. But it can only justify so much
restoration on its own. Indeed landowners have little incentive to restore beyond
what is necessary to protect their own assets. That leaves all other coastal residents
to fend for themselves. Tullos likes the idea of wetlands markets, in which a
company could recover restoration costs from a private or public fund dedicated to
preserving the storm-protection value of an integrated wetland. A fund like this
could be banked by the government or private beneficiaries of the wetlands or by
carbon emitters seeking to offset their pollution through carbon sequestration. But
those projects require reliable data, legal frameworks, and political will. I ask Tullos
if he thinks we will ever bring such restoration efforts to the necessary scale.
Honestly, he saysand here I imagine his eyes rolling toward the ceilingI
really dont.
But, he adds, that doesnt mean we dont do what we can.

17
 NOTES

CHAPTER 7: LIGHTS OUT

My understanding of how the electric grid is vulnerable to climate change is
informed by Rosemary Lyster & Manuel Peter Solis, Adaptation and the
Energy Sector, in 1 ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF ENVIRONMENTAL LAW 591
(___________ eds., 2016); LINCOLN DAVIES, ALEXANDRA KLASS, HARI M.
OSOFSKY, JOSEPH P. TOMAIN, & ELIZABETH J. WILSON, ENERGY LAW AND POLICY
(West Academic Publishing 2015); MICHELLE DAVIS & STEVE CLEMMER, POWER
FAILURE: HOW CLIMATE CHANGE PUTS OUR ELECTRICITY AT RISK (Union of
Concerned Scientists 2014),
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/effects-of-
climate-change-risks-on-our-electricity-system.html#.V0cus1d7VnY; U.S.
CLIMATE CHANGE SCIENCE PROGRAM, THIRD NATIONAL CLIMATE ASSESSMENT
REPORT, chapter 4 (January 2014); U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE,
CLIMATE CHANGE: ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE RISKS AND ADAPTATION EFFORTS

REPORT TO CONGRESSIONAL REQUESTERS UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE (2014) (GAO REPORT),

http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/660558.pdf; DIANA BAUER ET AL., US ENERGY

SECTOR VULNERABILITIES TO CLIMATE CHANGE (2013)

http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/07/f2/20130710-Energy-Sector-
Vulnerabilities-Report.pdf; SAM C A NIEROP & MICHAEL B GERRARD,
ENVISIONING RESILIENT ELECTRICAL INFRASTRUCTURE A POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR
INCORPORATING FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE INTO ELECTRICITY SECTOR PLANNING

(Columbia law school center for climate change law 2013),

http://web.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/climate-
change/files/Publications/Students/envisioning_resilient_electrical_infrastructure.
pdf; and NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, AMERICAS CLIMATE CHOICES: PANEL ON
ADAPTING TO THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE, ADAPTING TO THE IMPACTS OF

18
 CLIMATE CHANGE (Washington, D.C.: 2010), http://nap.edu/12783; and Robin
Kundis Craig, Energy System Impacts, in THE LAW OF ADAPTATION TO CLIMATE
CHANGE: UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS (Michael B. Gerrard &
Katrina Kuh, eds., 2012).
1 Hundreds of thousands of these abandoned appliances stood duct-
taped shut: Associated Press, Icebox Eye Sore Symbolizes Massive Cleanup
Challenge, USA TODAY, Oct. 20, 2005,
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-10-20-katrina-trash_x.htm
(Ice Box Eyesore).
1 loss of 10,000 fish representing more than 530 species: Katrina kills
most fish in New Orleans aquarium, CNN.COM, Sept. 7, 2005,
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/09/07/katrina.zoos/.
1 the chaos at Memorial hospital: SHERI FINK, FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL:
LIFE AND DEATH IN A STORM-RAVAGED HOSPITAL (2013).
2 "I'm a retired mortician, so it don't bother me much." Ice Box Eye Sore,
supra (quoting Ron Fields).
2 and one just for TexasIm not kidding: LINCOLN DAVIES, ET AL., supra.
3 According to the a report commissioned by the Union of Concerned
Scientists: DAVIS & CLEMMER, supra.
3 Gothams gas-fired power plants all rest hunkered on the waterfront:
A STRONGER, MORE RESILIENT NEW YORK (2013) http://s-
media.nyc.gov/agencies/sirr/SIRR_singles_Hi_res.pdf.
3 some 100 electric facilities in the contiguous United States . . .: DAVIS
& CLEMMER, supra.
4 energy production represented the second largest use of water: D.
Elcock, Future U.S. Water Consumption: The Role of Energy Production, 46 J. OF
THE AMER. WATER RES. ASSOC. 447 (2010).
5 about a quarter of existing thermal power plants: Id. [check]
5 researchers have found dozens of instances: Id., Figure 4.
5 Were the lake to completely dry up (a plausible scenario): CRAIG, supra.

19
 5 most studies expect solar capacity to decrease: Id.
5 As for wind power, the overall climate effect remains uncertain: Id.
5 The Gulf Coast . . . accommodates nearly 4,000 oil-and-gas platforms:
AMERICAS WETLAND FOUNDATION, AMERICAS ENERGY COAST, & ENTERGY,
BUILDING A RESILIENT ENERGY GULF COAST: EXECUTIVE REPORT (2010),
http://www.entergy.com/content/our_community/environment/GulfCoastAdaptati
on/Building_a_Resilient_Gulf_Coast.pdf (commissioned by Americas Wetland
Foundation and Entergy) (AWF/ENTERGY REPORT).
5 Half of the nations refining capacity: Id.
5 Extracting those fuels . . . will also be more difficult because of climate
change: GAO, REPORT, supra.
6 thawing permafrost has already cut short exploration seasons:
According to the Government Accountability Office:
By way of protection, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources limits
the amount of travel on the tundra. Over the past 30 years, the number of
days where travel is permitted has dropped from more than 200 to 100,
thereby reducing by at least half the number of days that natural gas and oil
exploration and extraction equipment can be used.

Id.
6 melting sea ice could open new routes: Id.
6 fuel storage facilities . . . are at risk to climate-related flooding: Id.
6 as the federal government and the multi-nationals now frequently
admit: See, e.g., Id.; AWF/ENTERGY REPORT, supra.
7 hot cables are less efficient: GAO REPORT, supra.
7 a sagging power line . . . did just that: My description of the 2003
Northeastern Blackout is drawn from TED KOPPEL, LIGHTS OUT: A CYBERATTACK,
A NATION UNPREPARED, SURVIVING THE AFTERMATH (2015); FINAL REPORT ON

THE AUGUST 14, 2003 BLACKOUT IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA: CAUSES
AND RECOMMENDATIONS (2004),
http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandMedia/BlackoutFinal-

20
 Web.pdf; and Blackout Trail Leads to Ohio, CNN.COM,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/16/power.outage/index.html?eref=sitesearch.
7 an epic band of thunderstorms, known as a derecho: GAO REPORT,
supra.
7 the 2011 Las Conchas wildfire . . . nearly debilitated two high-voltage
transmission lines: Id.
7 wildfires will put a large share of transmission equipment at risk:
JAYANT SATHAYE, ET AL.,ESTIMATING RISK TO CALIFORNIA ENERGY
INFRASTRUCTURE FROM PROJECTED CLIMATE CHANGE, (California Energy
Commission, 2012), http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012publications/CEC-500-2012-
057/CEC-500-2012-057.pdf
8 the overall increase in energy consumption . . . may be as small as 5
percent: CRAIG, supra.
8 The Department of Energys Argonne National Laboratory estimates:
Id.
8 I know the landscape: Robert R.M. Verchick, Disaster Justice: The
Geography of Human Capability, 24 DUKE ENVTL. L. & POLY FOR. 23 (2012);
ROBERT R.M. VERCHICK, FACING CATASTROPHE: ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION FOR A
POST-KATRINA WORLD 105-91 (Harvard University Press 2010).
8 poor people and people of color are more likely to suffer: See Verchick,
Disaster Justice, supra.
8 all of the things we lose when we lose power: Chaamala Klinger, et al.,
Power Outages, Extreme Events and Health: a Systematic Review of the Literature
from 2011-2012, PLOS CURRENTS DISASTERS, Jan. 2, 2014,
http://currents.plos.org/disasters/article/power-outages-extreme-events-and-
health-a-systematic-review-of-the-literature-from-2011-2012. f 2
8 Researchers have cataloged an array of impacts: Id.
9 Post-traumatic stress disorder . . . is common: See Sandro Galea, et al.,
The Epidemiology of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after Disasters, 27

21
 EPIDEMIOLOGICAL REVIEWS 78 (2005),
http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/1/78.full.pdf+html.
9 roughly seven times as many as died in Superstorm Sandy: Eric
Klinenberg, Adaptation, NEW YORKER, Jan. 7, 2013,
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/07/adaptation-2.
9 In a survey of more than 304 metropolitan areas: BILL M. JESDALE,
RACHEL MORELLO-FROSCH, & LARA CUSHING, THE RACIAL/ETHNIC DISTRIBUTION
OF HEAT RISK-RELATED LAND COVER IN RELATION TO RESIDENTIAL SEGREGATION,

(Research Triangle Park, NC: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,

2013), http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/121/5/ ehp.1205919.pdf.
9 Every year, hundreds die: TRACEY ROSS, A DISASTER IN THE MAKING:
ADDRESSING THE VULNERABILITY OF LOW-INCOME COMMUNITIES TO EXTREME
WEATHER, American Progress, AUG. 2013,
HTTPS://WWW.AMERICANPROGRESS.ORG/WP-

CONTENT/UPLOADS/2013/08/LOWINCOMERESILIENCE-2.PDF

9 the annual average air temperature of a city with 1 million people:

ROSS, supra.
9 Pacific Gas and Electric . . . is working with state and federal agencies:
GAO REPORT, supra.
9 Florida Power and Light . . . monitors climate-change-based flood risk:
Id.
10 which basically fall into four categories: DAVIS & CLEMMER, supra.
11 Cities now using smart-grid technology, like Chattanooga, Tennessee:
DAVIS & CLEMMER, supra.
11 wind generators helped keep the lights on: Id.
11 ISO New England . . . received not a single report of damage: Id.
11 The five-turbine Jersey Atlantic Wind Project . . . was back producing
power: Jervey 2012
12 The plant owner and the public will probably value energy assets
differently: My co-authors and I call this market failure a security externality.

22
 SEE DANIEL A. FARBER, JIM CHEN, ROBERT R.M. VERCHICK & LISA GROW SUN,
DISASTER LAW AND POLICY (WoltersKluwer/Aspen 3d ed. 2015). See also,
KOPPEL, supra (noting that large energy companies have a history of putting profits
above security).
12 Recently, the New York Public Service Commission ordered: NIEROP &
GERRARD, supra; Ethan Strell, Public Service Commission Approves Con Ed Rate
Case and Climate Change Adaptation Settlement, CLIMATE BLOG, SABIN CENTER
FOR CLIMATE CHANGE LAW, Feb. 21, 2014,
http://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2014/02/21/public-service-
commission-approves-con-ed-rate-case-and-climate-change-adaptation-
settlement.
12 bringing very serious consequences: Lars Brydsten et al., Expected
extreme sea levels at Forsmark and LaxemarSimpevarp up until year 2100 (2009)
http://skb.se/upload/publications/pdf/TR-09-21.pdf.
12 In 2007, Entergy launched an initiative: AWF/ENTERGY REPORT, supra.
13 may occur in the future.: Id.
13 a 2010 joint report issued by Entergy and Americas Wetland
Foundation: Id.
13 When you add up all the physical assets: AWF/ENTERGY REPORT, supra.
13 50,000 oil and gas structures: Id.
13 Entergys report lays out decades worth of projects: Id.
14 this amount could . . . re-build . . . New Orleans . . . six times over:
Id.
14 I visited the CEO of Entergy-New Orleans, Charles Rice: Interview with
Charles Rice, CEO of Entergy New Orleans, May 9, 2016.
14 Tullos adds that adaptation is also a big priority: Interview with Steve
Tullos, Senior Manager of Environmental Strategy and Policy at Entergy, May 9,
2016.
15 ENO filed for bankruptcy: GAO REPORT, supra.
15-16 And Entergys research suggests: AWF/ENTERGY REPORT, supra.

23
 16 In New Orleans, its 28 percent: WHO LIVES IN NEW ORLEANS AND

METRO PARISHES NOW?, THE DATA CENTER, Feb. 16, 2016,

http://www.datacenterresearch.org/data-resources/who-lives-in-new-orleans-now
(using data from the 2014 U.S. census).

24