The Risks of Climate Change to Coastal Energy Infrastructure

Given the rapidly evolving effects of climate change and its consequences on the rising sea level, it is imperative that researchers and governments start to put a focus on adaptation policies for coastal infrastructure. This because of the heavy risks on the environment caused mostly by flooding and erosion which could lead for example to oil, LNG spills or damages to nuclear powers. Considering as well that energy infrastructure has long life designs, policy makers must be able to predict the short-medium-long term effects of any environmental change affecting it.

To this regard, the UK is registered to have three times more coastal energy facilities than any other country. This might as well be the reason for the detailed research led by the university of Liverpool, which developed an interactive map portraying the coastal flood risks in the country drawing diversified data from different case studies. The viewer includes as well future scenarios topologically portrayed according to different pathways of global warming considering different levels of sea rise and storm increase. At the same time, it incorporates as well potential adaptation techniques, such as power line routes or shoreline management plan, and visualizes their impact on the different possible future pathways.

The product is also denominated Decision Support Tool (DST) which defines indeed its purpose to facilitate decision makers in drafting adaptation arrangements for such risky areas by allowing them to envision the impact of sea level rise in the coastal region thus as well determining the extent to which flood and high tide hazards might unravel. One of the case studies as well includes the economic impact of the possible extreme events becoming a handy tool for policy makers and environmental financing. 

As far as my research went, I was not able to find any applications of the map in order to assess its accuracy and reliability. Moreover, it disclaims itself as a non legally binding tool, which makes me assume further trials must be carried out before being applicable for policy makers. The map is also missing the probability framework for all different scenarios, which makes it as well academically incomplete and difficult to be applicable to policy making.

One thing which is quite visible on this coastal flood risk map are the UK nuclear powers, which position themselves at a position particularly prone to riskiness in climate change scenarios. These industries' infrastructures are usually built next to the ocean as it provides them the necessary large quantities of cooling water which is required to handle the waste heat discharge. For this reason, they are very susceptible to floods and tides which might lead to disruption in the flow of cooling water to the reactor as well as endangering hazardous materials in the power plant.


References:

Katopodis, Theodoros & Sfetsos, Thanasis. (2019). A Review of Climate Change Impacts to Oil Sector Critical Services and Suggested Recommendations for Industry Uptake. Infrastructures. 4. 74. 

https://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/stories/energy-infrastructure.html

Brown, S., S. Hanson and R.J. Nicholls ‘Implications of sea-level rise and extreme events around Europe: a review of coastal energy infrastructure’, Climatic Change 122(1-2) 2014, pp.81–95. 

ARCoES 'Coastal Flood Risk Map: decision support tool' University of Liverpool (n.d.).  

Knight, Phil & Prime, Thomas & Brown, Jenny & Morrissey, Karyn & Plater, Andrew. (2015). Application of flood risk modelling in a web-based geospatial decision support tool for coastal adaptation to climate change. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences. 1615-1642. 

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