Visualizing Climate-Related Risks to the Natural Gas System Using Cal-Adapt
Cal-Adapt is an online, interactive tool that conveys local climate risks for the energy sector
The Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Berkeley campus
Recipient
Berkeley, CA
Recipient Location
9th
Senate District
14th
Assembly District
$300,000
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
The team launched Cal-Adapt 2.0, improving the original platform by providing higher-resolution climate projections with improved capture of temperature extremes and precipitation; an Applications Programming Interface that supports development of custom tools; a data download tool that clips to the precise area of interest as well as desired models and parameters; an improved extreme heat tool incorporating input from utility representatives and public health colleagues; aggregation options requested by utility representatives; and more. This project was part of California's Fourth Climate Assessment and the final project report can be found here: http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/techreports/docs/20180827-Projectio….
The Issue
Research supported by the State continues to investigate climate risks and adaptation opportunities facing the energy system, including the natural gas sector. For example, PIER Natural Gas research (report no. CEC-500-2017-008) investigates vulnerabilities to sea level rise of pipeline infrastructure. A recently initiated contract sheds light on how sea level rise-related risks in the Delta are compounded by subsidence. These and other efforts feed directly into the current project, which leverages visualization and data-sharing capabilities of the State's existing Cal-Adapt (http://cal-adapt.org/) resource to enable direct exploration of climate-related risks to the natural gas system.
Project Innovation
The natural gas system is vulnerable to climate-related changes and events such as sea level rise and storm surge, inland flooding, subsidence of the delta and levees, and climate-related fluctuations in natural gas supply and demand. This work ensures that the best peer-reviewed scientific results are visualized in a readily accessible, understandable form to support planning and adaptation efforts. This project provides critical support to communicate scientific advances regarding climate-related risks to the natural gas sector and foster planning to protect infrastructure and vulnerable populations. Use cases include supporting design of a compressor station in Blythe; and eventual intention (expressed by an IOU in an IEPR workshop) of supporting General Rate Cases through use of data on Cal-Adapt.[br/][br/]The Technical Advisory Committee includes IOUs, a publicly owned utility, and the California Office of Emergency Services. The Technical Advisory Committee includes IOUs, a publicly owned utility, and the California Office of Emergency Services.
Project Benefits
This project enhances Cal-Adapt, an interactive website designed to enable exploration of high-resolution peer-reviewed data portraying projected climate risks, with new data sets, visualizations, and tools that portray natural gas sector vulnerabilities and fosters planning to protect infrastructure and vulnerable populations. These enhancements respond directly to input from IOUs, so that data visualizations, custom tools, and options for downloading data are developed specifically to support use by natural gas IOUs to foster resilience and protect natural gas infrastructure.
Reliability
Fosters planning to avoid major disruptions and for resilience to risks to the natural gas system posed by a changing climate.
Safety
Greater reliability associated with timely resilience planning and implementation will protect against loss of service as well as damage to natural gas infrastructure, both of which can pose threats to health and safety.