The intensity and impact of wildfires has dramatically increased over the past few decades due to climate change. And as those acres burn, those fires are releasing trapped carbon back into the atmosphere and only exasperating global warming.
Utilities have been at the center of the controversy around wildfires - taking the blame for devastating events in California and Maui, but also leading in developing solutions to mitigate the rise in and impact of wildfires.
The intensity and impact of wildfires has dramatically increased over the past few decades due to climate change. And as those acres burn, those fires are releasing trapped carbon back into the atmosphere and only exasperating global warming.
Utilities have been at the center of the controversy around wildfires - taking the blame for devastating events in California and Maui, but also leading in developing solutions to mitigate the rise in and impact of wildfires.
This is 8 Minutes a podcast helping you understand the Energy and Climate Challenge. In just a few minutes, I'm your host, paul Schuster. Now that the winter is upon us, we can take a breath and recover from yet another season of historic wildfires. Smoke from Canadian fires, for instance, blanketed the upper part of the US, which, if you haven't seen them, created some remarkable pictures of New York and other cities blanketed in eerie orange glow. The frequency, size and impact of wildfires is only increasing in our globally warming world, which has proven to be a challenge for utilities on two accounts. For one thing, utility equipment could be a major source of ignition for these fires, but, regardless of the source, utility equipment is also very vulnerable to these devastating crises. Today, I'm going to take a look at the relationship between wildfires and climate change and discuss how utilities are addressing this challenge.
Speaker 1:
8 Minutes. How long it takes the suns raised to the earth, or how long it takes for a fast moving wildfire to burn enough trees to emit 4.5 tons of carbon into the atmosphere, the fire climate cycle is a real concern, so let's get it on. The National Interagency Fire Center estimates that the US loses roughly 8 million acres to wildfires every year, and that number has been growing. Just 30 years ago, that number was closer to 3 to 4 million acres. As the climate has shifted on us, so too has the ferocity of these incredibly damaging events. The USDA released a report indicating that a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature equates to about a 600% increase in wildfires, and those fires are occurring everywhere. Sure, california has gotten a lot of press recently due to how devastating recent fires have been to communities and the state in general out there, but last year's fires in Canada were intense 45 million acres were affected north of our border, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that even the southeast United States has seen an increase in lightning strike-initiated wildfires by upward of 30%. Or take the horrible Maui fires of this past summer.
Speaker 1:
There's a destructive cycle between climate change and wildfires that feeds upon itself. For one thing, rising global temperatures and changing weather patterns have created a literal tinderbox in parts of the country. The three-year period of 2020-2022 was the driest on record for the western US. At one point in October of 2022, 100% of Nevada and 99.77% of California was living under moderate to extreme drought conditions. The littlest spark was going to be devastating, and once those fires burn well, as I alluded to in my intro, trees and forests and shrubbery. These are natural carbon sinks. Burning a hectare of forest can release somewhere between 5 and 30 tons of CO2 back into the atmosphere, further exasperating the climate effects in the first place, which is one of the reasons as to why wildfires have become such a focal point of climate action.
Speaker 1:
Getting these crises under control is critical for not only public health and safety, but to ensure that the Earth's natural carbon capture technology stays stored. And it's with this in mind when the federal government allocated $5.5 billion in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act towards wildfire mitigation. And it's why power utilities are so sensitive to wildfire action. Because for utilities, the challenge is twofold Not only do wildfires threaten to damage the infrastructure upon which the power grid is built, but the utility equipment in the first place could be an ignition source to spark those fires. Initially, not every jurisdiction automatically would blame a utility for such a fire. In some regions, it must be proven that the utility acted with malice or recklessness or negligence. California, on the other hand, uses something called inverse condemnation, where, as long as the utility's equipment is involved, they're liable, which puts the utility at significant risk. Just ask Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco, which had to declare bankruptcy after accumulating $30 billion in liabilities due to California wildfires.
Speaker 1:
So utilities are trying to get ahead of this situation, taking steps to build wildfire mitigation and resiliency plans. What do those plans look like? Well, so far, most of them rely heavily on increased vegetation management activities, cutting away overhanging branches or tree limbs that could damage equipment and potentially start a fire, or cutting fuel breaks around sensitive equipment so that encroaching wildfires never get too close. More recently, improved technology has been used, such as fast-trip technology, where the sensitivity of certain protective devices and equipment is increased. In the case of a wildfire-induced fault.
Speaker 1:
The most foolproof solution so far, though, is undergrounding this is pretty much just what it sounds like where the existing transmission and distribution infrastructure is buried underground, both protecting it from any sort of fire raging above, but also containing any sparks and issues that could arise from the equipment, and keeping those issues away from dry, flammable material on the surface. That's the route that PG&E has gone down as they've emerged from their bankruptcy. According to their estimates, 95% of their network's wildfire risk exists within only about 22% of their power lines. So PG&E is targeting 10,000 miles of wires to bury underground and dramatically reduce the risk and impact from those fires. That solution, though, is expensive. Meeting PG&E's targets could cost somewhere between $15 and $30 billion and, frankly, it's slow moving as well. Since announcing their aspirations, the California utility successfully buried 73 miles of lines in 2021, 180 miles in 2022, and 197 miles as of October of 2023. At that rate, well, it could take 50 years or more for PG&E to complete all 10,000 miles.
Speaker 1:
Utilities don't have a lot of great solutions for wildfire mitigation. Much like everything else in climate action, the solutions that we do have are expensive and take a long time to implement, which means that we're likely to see a lot more news stories in the near future about wildfires and their impact. Unfortunately, this year was a blessedly wet one for California, as atmospheric river conditions dumped a ton of rain on the state, but relying upon Mother Nature may not be the most foolproof of plans, so utilities are building out their wildfire mitigation plans, tapping into federal dollars to identify and prioritize their needs undergrounding where needed, recovering or trimming back tree lines elsewhere, inspecting old equipment and removing gear that may pose risks. Utilities are trying to get on the right side of this. I'm Paul Schuster, and this has been your 8 Minutes.