London’s Heathrow Airport has been forced to close temporarily after a fire in a nearby electricity substation. More than 1,300 flights have been suspended and thousands of passengers left stranded.

Substations take high-voltage electricity from pylons and transform it into the lower voltages you use at home. This happens in a transformer filled with oil to insulate the electricity. In this case, it appears that more than 20,000 litres of this oil caught fire.

The closure of one of the world’s largest airports due to a failure of just one electricity substation underlines how important it is that critical national energy infrastructure – pylons, substations and so on – keeps functioning. This is only becoming more important as demand for electricity increases, thanks to transport and domestic heating switching to lower-carbon electrified alternatives – notably electric cars and heat pumps.

Yet the UK’s energy system is facing growing threats from unprecedented risks. We still don’t know what caused the Heathrow fire, but it appears to be unusual in this regard, as threats to energy systems come mainly from extreme weather. In the UK, that tends to mean windstorms, flooding, heatwaves and associated wildfires, and cold spells.

2024 was the warmest calendar year on record, and the “fingerprints” of climate change are increasingly evident in more intense and frequent extreme weather events. It is crucial to ensure the energy network can handle this weather.

Gas and electricity operators in the UK have established protocols for managing networks in adverse weather, investing large amounts to protect critical assets. But recent events have exposed vulnerabilities. The storms Arwen and Éowyn left thousands without power for days, underscoring the previous UK government’s admission that the country is underprepared for extreme weather events.

Major hazards to UK energy infrastructure

As part of a UK government research programme on climate vulnerability, we identified four major climate hazards that affect the UK’s energy infrastructure. We then used high-resolution climate simulations to assess how these hazards would change in a worst-case scenario, where the world keeps emitting greenhouse gases as usual.

Windstorms: These are projected to increase in severity, especially in northern and western regions of the UK, posing risks to overhead power lines.

Hot spells: Extreme heat of 35°C or more, once rare, could happen every other year by the 2060s. This will strain electricity networks as buildings and pipes need to be cooled, while efficiency will be reduced and transformers may be damaged.

Cold spells: The most extreme cold weather will happen less often as the world warms. But the climate will become more variable, causing more sudden temperature shifts which may challenge energy distribution and demand management.

Flooding: Higher-intensity rainfall, particularly in winter, will increase the risk of flooded substations and gas pressure reduction stations. The former has led to large power outages.

This worst-case emissions scenario probably won’t happen, as the world is currently on a better trajectory. Nonetheless our results, alongside observed consequences of past events, underscore the need to safeguard the UK’s energy system against increasing climate threats.

Making the UK energy system more resilient

We propose several strategies to make UK energy infrastructure more resilient. Importantly, energy operators, policymakers and regulators should adopt a system-wide approach, as failures in one area can cascade across the entire network and affect other critical infrastructure. The Heathrow closure perfectly illustrates this.

Our report promotes adaptation measures that are currently available and will be beneficial regardless of future climate changes.

For instance, we could strengthen and protect vulnerable network assets like substations and power lines to better withstand extreme weather. This might involve building flood defences around substations or raising them off the ground, undergrounding critical overhead lines, and protecting infrastructure vulnerable to falling trees blown over during windstorms.

We could use smart sensors and predictive analytics to monitor things like power lines and detect failures early. We could minimise disruptions during extreme weather by getting better at forecasting, and by improving rapid response capabilities. And we could further encourage off-peak energy use, to ease grid stress during extreme weather.

To build a resilient UK energy network, we need better tools to quantify and simulate climate risks, ensuring decision-making is based on robust scientific evidence.

We also urgently need new resilience metrics and standards. While guidelines such as ETR 138 exist for flood resilience, there is a lack of equivalent standards for other climate hazards such as windstorms or extreme heat. These standards help identify critical assets and parts of the network most in need of further protection.

The UK’s transition to net zero emissions should consider climate resilience as a priority. Investments in renewable energy infrastructure, battery storage and smart grids should incorporate resilience assessments from the outset.

We should also consider providing generators or other ways to produce energy at highly vulnerable locations where it is of critical need, including hospitals and airports such as Heathrow.

Finally, the energy sector needs to work closely with other critical infrastructure operators – such as transport, water and telecommunications – to mitigate cascading risks and ensure a coordinated response to extreme weather events. We’re part of a project that has begun to do this for transport. But resilience strategies should be extended to consider risks from climate, cyber-attacks, asset failures and extreme energy demand.

While the fire and power cut at Heathrow was not related to extreme weather, it highlights the consequences of such failures. By acting now, we can safeguard the UK’s energy networks against unprecedented extreme weather and ensure a secure, reliable and sustainable energy system for generations to come.

Hayley J. Fowler, Professor of Climate Change Impacts, Newcastle University; Colin Manning, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Climate Science, Newcastle University, and Sean Wilkinson, Professor of Structural Engineering, Newcastle University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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