ALM UNDP

Summary:

Overview

Many countries are increasingly vulnerable to destructive weather events - floods, droughts, windstorms, or other parameters. The vulnerability is driven in part by climate but also by countries’ sensitivity to events exacerbated by past practices, socioeconomic conditions, or legacy issues. The degree to which vulnerability to weather affects the countries’ economies is driven by their coping or adaptive capacities.

Seasonal weather patterns, weather variability, and extreme events can affect the production and supply of energy, impact transmission capacity, disrupt oil and gas production, and impact the integrity of transmission pipelines and power distribution networks. Climate change also affects patterns of seasonal energy demand. It is important to explore these vulnerabilities for the energy sector given its major contribution to economic development, the long life span of energy infrastructure planning, and the dependence of energy supply and demand on weather.

HEAT - A Hands-on Energy Adaptation Toolkit is designed to lead you through as assessment of climate vulnerabilities and adaptation options in the energy sector of your country. HEAT can help you raise awareness among key stakeholders and initiate dialogue on energy sector adaptation.

HEAT uses a bottom-up, stakeholder-based, qualitative/semi-quantitative risk-assessment approach to discuss and identify risks, adaptation measures, and their costs and benefits. It draws on experience and published guidance from the United Kingdom and Australia, as well as existing research and literature.

HEAT’s climate vulnerability assessment framework puts stakeholders at the heart of the decision-making process and involves:

• Climate risk screening of the energy sector to identify and prioritize hazards, current vulnerabilities, and risks from projected climate changes out to the year 2050.
• Identification of adaptation options to reduce overall vulnerability.
• A high-level cost benefit analysis of key physical adaptation options.

HEAT has been successfully piloted in Albania and Uzbekistan. This experience has demonstrated how HEAT can help countries and energy sector stakeholders develop policies and projects that are robust in the face of climatic uncertainties, and assist them in managing existing energy concerns as the climate changes. HEAT identifies key direct risks to energy supply and demand and options for adaptation to establish where to focus subsequent in-depth analyses. It also identifies additional research needed to better understand the implications of extreme climatic events for the energy sector as well as potential indirect impacts such as possible adaptation actions in the agriculture sector that may affect energy supply.

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