Climate Change Impacts: Decision Making and Risk Management in Wisconsin’s Utility Industry
September 22, 2010
9:00am-3:30pm
September 22, 2010
University of Wisconsin
Madison Pyle Center for Executive Education
Madison, WI
Format: Presentations and Discussions
Please Note: This discussion is not about Global Climate Change; it is simply about changes in Wisconsin's climate and
implications for energy industry planning.
AGENDA
What should we know about the future that will help us plan for tomorrow? This session will examine what we know
today about the changing Wisconsin climate and will discuss what steps the energy industry may want to take to
prepare for this new world. Our goal is to help the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) conduct its
research and craft a final product that will be immediately useful to the industries that need to be forward thinking.
9:00 - Introductions
9:10 - Modeling Climate Change in Wisconsin
· Dan Vimont, UW-Madison
o Historical temperature and precipitation trends
o Projected changes to Wisconsin's future climate
o Using probability to assess risk
10:40 - Break
11:00 - Case Study and Open Discussion Regarding Impacts on the Energy Industry--Will any of these changes have
implications for the energy industry?
· Wind Energy
· Building Energy Management
· Transmission
CASE STUDY: Climate Change and Wind Farms
· Tracey Holloway, UW-Madison
o Case study on how changes in climate could have affected the output of three wind farms
12:00 - Lunch
1:00 - Decision Making and Risk
· Commissioner Lauren Azar, Wisconsin Public Service Commission
. Dick Bratcher, Senior Principal in KEMA's Sustainable Generation Services and Climate Services
2:15 - Break
2:30 - Discussion: Getting the Perspective of the Energy Industry
· Open Discussion Flip Chart Work--We will work with four major areas for brainstorming: Land and Vegatation; Water;
Air Temperature; and Frequency and Intensity of Extreme Weather Events
o What information do utility managers need regarding climate change?
o Will climate change adaptation be important for Wisconsin's utility industry?
o How will utilities respond to climate change? How should customers?
3:30 - Adjourn
Mitigation vs. Adaptation
A key concept to understand for this program is the difference between climate change mitigation and adaptation. Most
discussions about climate change, especially in the context of energy utilities, deal with mitigation, which is reducing the
amount of greenhouse gases that reach the atmosphere from human activities. Adaptation, which is the focus of this
workshop, is about managing the negative impacts that climate change will have on humans in the future. The flow chart
below shows the chain of events that lead to climate change and where mitigation and adaptation fit in with respect to
reducing the harmful impacts of climate change.
Reproduced with permission from Gregory Nemet, University of Wisconsin-Madison