Climate Change

IEEE’s mission is to advance technology for the benefit of humanity. Today the world faces its largest modern-day threat—climate change. We recognize this global crisis and are committed to helping combat and mitigate the effects of climate change through pragmatic and accessible technical solutions and providing engineers and technologists with a neutral space for discussion and action.
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About Our Conferences & Meetings

PES sponsors or co-sponsors many conferences and meetings throughout the year. Attending these events is a great way to stay up to date with latest advances, hear from leaders from the profession, and network with your colleagues.

IEEE PES Perspectives

Our members have made climate change initiatives a priority. Read what they have to say about power and energy, and how we can make a difference through the smart applications of technology.

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Supporting Energy Transition in Transmission Systems: An Operator’s Experience Using Electromagnetic Transient Simulation

The electric power industry is faced with the challenges of mitigating climate change, maintaining low electricity prices, and satisfying high reliability requirements for power supply. The increased application of power electronics devices is the inevitable result of the changes being experienced by the system. Careful analysis is required to install and operate power electronics devices. This article describes the use of electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulation on the French transmission grid to meet these new challenges in the context of energy transition.
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A Numerical Approach for Hybrid Simulation of Power System Dynamics Considering Extreme Icing Events

The global climate change leads to more extreme meteorological conditions such as icing weather, which have caused great losses to power systems. Comprehensive simulation tools are required to enhance the capability of power system risk assessment under extreme weather conditions. A hybrid numerical simulation scheme integrating icing weather events with power system dynamics is proposed to extend power system numerical simulation. A technique is developed to efficiently simulate the interaction of slow dynamics of weather events and fast dynamics of power systems. An extended package for PSS/E enabling hybrid simulation of icing event and power system disturbance is developed, based on which a hybrid simulation platform is established.
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Planning With Multiple Transmission and Storage Investment Options Under Uncertainty: A Nested Decomposition Approach

Achieving the ambitious climate change mitigation objectives set by governments worldwide is bound to lead to unprecedented amounts of network investment to accommodate low-carbon sources of energy. Beyond investing in conventional transmission lines, new technologies, such as energy storage, can improve operational flexibility and assist with the cost-effective integration of renewables. Given the long lifetime of these network assets and their substantial capital cost, it is imperative to decide on their deployment on a long-term cost-benefit basis. In this paper, we propose a novel, efficient, and highly generalizable framework for solving large-scale planning problems under uncertainty by using a temporal decomposition scheme based on the principles of Nested Benders.
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A Probabilistic Transmission Planning Framework for Reducing Network Vulnerability to Extreme Events

The restructuring of electric power industry has brought in plenty of challenges for transmission expansion planning (TEP), mainly due to uncertainties. The commonly used probabilistic TEP approach requires the network to meet an acceptable risk criterion. However, a series of blackouts in recent years caused by extreme weather-related events have raised the concerns about network vulnerability through calculating the expected risk value. In this paper, we have proposed the concept that TEP should be economically adjusted in order to make network less vulnerable to extreme events (EEs) caused by climate change, e.g., floods or ice storms.
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Robust Resiliency-Oriented Operation of Active Distribution Networks Considering Windstorms

Recent climate changes have created intense natural disasters, such as windstorms, which can cause significant damages to power grids. System resilience is defined as the ability of the system to withstand such high-impact low-probability events. This paper proposes a robust resilient operational schedule for active distribution networks against windstorms. In order to capture dynamic behaviors of these disasters, zonal disaster-specific uncertainty sets associated with the windstorm are proposed.
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From Reliability to Resilience: Planning the Grid Against the Extremes

Although extreme events, mainly natural disasters and climate change-driven severe weather, are the result of naturally occurring processes, power system planners, regulators, and policy makers do not usually recognize them within network reliability standards. Instead, planners have historically designed the electric power infrastructure accounting for the so-called credible (or "average") outages that usually represent single or (some kind of) simultaneous faults (e.g., faults on double circuits).
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A Multi-State Model for Transmission System Resilience Enhancement Against Short-Circuit Faults Caused by Extreme Weather Events

Due to global climate change, the effect of extreme weather on power systems has attracted extensive attention. In the prior-art grid resilience studies, the hurricanes or wildfires are mainly defended in terms of expected line damages, while they are prone to trigger short-circuit fault (SCF) evolved with dynamic influence in reality. In this paper, a fragile model is developed to evaluate the nodal SCF probability considering the insulation aging of equipment and extreme weather condition.
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Stochastic Unit Commitment in Isolated Systems With Renewable Penetration Under CVaR Assessment

Isolated regions and islands are facing imported fossil-fuel dependency, higher electricity prices, and vulnerability to climate change. At the same time, they are increasing their renewable penetration and, therefore, risk for electric utilities. Integrating stochastic energy resources in noninterconnected systems may take advantage of an intelligent and optimized risk-averse unit commitment (UC) model. This paper presents a two-stage stochastic UC model with high renewable penetration including reserve requirements for the efficient management of uncertainty.
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Resilience Enhancement With Sequentially Proactive Operation Strategies

Extreme weather events, many of which are climate change related, are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity and causing catastrophic outages, reminding the need to enhance the resilience of power systems. This paper proposes a proactive operation strategy to enhance system resilience during an unfolding extreme event. The uncertain sequential transition of system states driven by the evolution of extreme events is modeled as a Markov process. At each decision epoch, the system topology is used to construct a Markov state. Transition probabilities are evaluated according to failure rates caused by extreme events.
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Hydrogen-Electric Aircraft Technologies and Integration: Enabling an Environmentally Sustainable Aviation Future

As the global community grapples with growing concerns of a changing climate, many eyes have turned to the sustainability of the transportation sector. In the United States, transportation is currently the leading category contributing to all greenhouse gas emissions, producing more emissions per year than the electricity generation, industry, commercial and residential, and agricultural sectors individually. As various transportation modes transition to more sustainable models, such as with the use of battery-electric vehicles, the aviation sector has struggled to identify effective solutions for future sustainability goals, largely due to the difference in power and energy requirements of aircraft, as compared to other vehicles.
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Wildfire Resiliency: California Case for Change

The world has seen an increase in catastrophic wildfires that have caused loss of lives, massive economic impacts from the properties and structures destroyed, and negative impacts on our environment and ecosystem. A recent study by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the greenhouse gas emissions from the 2018 California wildfires is on par with the entire year of equivalent emissions from all electricity generations combined feeding the needs of California.
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CF3I Gas Mixtures: Breakdown Characteristics and Potential for Electrical Insulation

SF6 is a potent greenhouse gas, and there has been research into more environmental friendly alternative gases with the aim of replacing the use of SF6 gas in high-voltage equipment. So far, the research into alternative gases has shown that CF3 I gas mixtures have promising dielectric properties comparable to those of SF6 . This paper provides an overview of research into CF3 I gas and its mixtures, and gives an insight into its key properties. These include laboratory tests on the gas mixtures and initial applications to electrical power equipment.
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Nonlinear Performance Degradation Prediction of Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells Using Relevance Vector Machine

Environmental issues, especially global warming due to the greenhouse effect, have become more and more critical in recent decades. As one potential candidate among different alternative “green energy” solutions for sustainable development, the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has received extensive research attention for many years for energy and transportation applications. In this paper, an advanced self-adaptive relevance vector machine (RVM) has been developed and demonstrated to predict the performance degradation of PEMFCs.
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Toward Fully Renewable Electric Energy Systems

Renewable energy sources are here to stay for a number of important reasons, including global warming and the depletion of fossil fuels. We explore in this paper how a thermal-dominated electric energy system can be transformed into a renewable-dominated one. This study relies on a stochastic programming model that allows representing the uncertain parameters plaguing such long-term planning exercise. Being the final year of our analysis 2050, we represent the transition from today to 2050 by allowing investment in both production and transmission facilities, with the target of achieving a renewable-dominated minimum-cost system. The methodology developed is illustrated using a realistic large-scale case study. Finally, policy conclusions are drawn.
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Decomposition Strategy for Districts as Renewable Energy Hubs

In light of the energy transition, it becomes a widespread solution to decentralize and to decarbonize energy systems. However, limited transformer capacities are a hurdle for large-scale integration of solar energy in the electricity grid. The aim of this paper is to define a novel concept of renewable energy hubs and to optimize its design strategy at the district scale in an appropriate computational time. To overcome runtime issues, the Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition method is applied to a mixed-integer linear programming framework of the renewable energy hub.Distributed energy units as well as centralized district units are considered.
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Two-Scale Stochastic Control for Integrated Multipoint Communication Systems With Renewables

Increasing threats of global warming and climate changes call for an energy-efficient and sustainable design of future wireless communication systems. To this end, a novel two-scale stochastic control framework is put forth for smart-grid powered coordinated multi-point (CoMP) systems. Taking into account renewable energy sources, dynamic pricing, two-way energy trading facilities, and imperfect energy storage devices, the energy management task is formulated as an infinite-horizon optimization problem minimizing the time-averaged energy transaction cost, subject to the users’ quality of service requirements.
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The Green Impact: How Renewable Sources Are Changing EU Electricity Prices

The European Union (EU) energy policy focuses on achieving a balance between three main pillars: increase the security of supply, reduce the impact of climate change, and improve economic competitiveness. To accomplish these objectives, the EU has been creating competitive conditions that internalize environmental externalities, and it has also actively promoted renewable energy.
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Enabling Cryogenic Hydrogen-Based CO2-Free Air Transport: Meeting the Demands of Zero Carbon Aviation

Flightpath 2050 from the European Union (EU) sets ambitious targets for reducing the emissions from civil aviation that contribute to climate change. Relative to aircraft in service in year 2000, new aircraft in 2050 are to reduce CO 2 emissions by 75% and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions by 90% per passenger kilometer flown. While significant improvements in asset management and aircraft and propulsion-system efficiency and are foreseen, it is recognized that the Flightpath 2050 targets will not be met with conventional jet fuel.
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Data-Driven Engineering: The Reliability and Resilience of the North American Bulk Power System [Technology Leaders]

Electricity is an essential need for modern society. Nearly everything we do relies on safe and affordable electric energy. The constant demand for reliable energy delivery exists during a time of rapid changes to and evolutions of the bulk power system (BPS) in North America. Inverter-based resources, such as wind, solar photovoltaic (PV), battery energy storage systems, and hybrid plants, continue to transform the mix of BPS-connected generating resources. Sustainability and climate change initiatives are driving innovations in end-use loads, such as the electrification of the transportation sector.
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Conditional Kernel Density Estimation Considering Autocorrelation for Renewable Energy Probabilistic Modeling

Renewable energy is essential for energy security and global warming mitigation. However, renewable power generation is uncertain due to volatile weather conditions and complex equipment operations. It is therefore important to understand and characterize the uncertainty in renewable power generation to improve operational efficiency. In this paper, we proposed a novel conditional density estimation method to model the distribution of power generation under various weather conditions. Compared with existing literature, our approach is especially useful for the purpose of short-term modeling, where the temporal dependence plays a more significant role.
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An Innovative Coalitional Trading Model for a Biomass Power Plant Paired With Green Energy Resources

The role of biomass resources to diminish the dependency on fossil fuels is steadily increasing worldwide. More importantly, governments set goals to boost the share of renewable energy resources in the power sector to face up to global warming issues. In this paper, a coalitional game model for the trading of a Biomass Power Plant (BPP) paired with a concentrating solar power facility and a wind park is proposed.
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Resilience Assessment of Distribution Systems Integrated With Distributed Energy Resources

The resilience of electric systems is receiving growing attention due to their increased vulnerability to infrastructure damages and widespread outages from frequent extreme climactic conditions attributed to global warming effects. Resilience evaluation methods should recognize the uncertainties and correlations in the performance variations of different types of energy resources, load characteristics, extreme events and their impacts on the grid elements.
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Robust Energy and Reserve Dispatch Under Variable Renewable Generation

Global warming and environmental pollution concerns have promoted dramatic integrations of renewable energy sources all over the world. Associated with benefits of environmental conservation, essentially uncertain and variable characteristics of such energy resources significantly challenge the operation of power systems. In order to implement reliable and economical operations, a robust energy and reserve dispatch (RERD) model is proposed in this paper, in which the operating decisions are divided into pre-dispatch and re-dispatch.
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The Island Hydrogen Project: Electrolytic Generated Hydrogen for Automotive and Maritime Applications

In 2014, the transport sector was responsible for 23% of total greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union (EU). During the same year, 13% of that sector's emissions came from the maritime segment, a number that is expected to rise during the coming years. The transport sector's share of renewable energy in 2014 was just 5.9%, mostly comprising biodiesel and bioethanol fuel.Electrification is a solution that will help reduce the transport sector's reliance on hydrocarbonbased fuels. This article describes the Island Hydrogen project, which introduced and tested new solutions to produce and use hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles and vessels.
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News & Annoucements

29-30 November 2023 | IEEE Sustainable Power and Energy Conference (iSPEC 2023)

The IEEE Sustainable Power and Energy Conference (iSPEC) is co-sponsored by the CSEE (Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering) and IEEE PES. It takes place every ...
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6-9 December 2023 | IEEE PES Asia Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference (APPEEC)

2023 IEEE PES 15th Asia-Pacific Power and Energy Engineering Conference will be held on 6th–9th December 2023 in Chiang Mai, Thailand , organized by IEEE ...
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29-30 January 2024 | IEEE Electrical Energy Storage Applications and Technologies Conference (EESAT)

The 12th IEEE Electrical Energy Storage Applications and Technologies (EESAT) conference will be held January 29-30, 2024 at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel San Diego ...
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Other IEEE Climate Change Resources

IEEE Climate Change Initiative
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IEEE Xplore® Climate Change Collection

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