The weather is changing. Here’s how utilities can adapt.

Extreme weather is here. Over the past month, the U.S. has experienced dangerous and deadly flash flooding and extreme heat. Projections for the 2025 wildfire season in the Western U.S. indicate significantly increased fire potential driven by drought expansion and above-average temperatures. Meanwhile, the 2025 U.S. tornado season is on track to be above the 30-year historical average, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasts a 60% chance of an above-average hurricane season.

Besides the devastating loss of life and the damage inflicted by these types of events, they have something else in common: they often leave communities without power to meet critical needs. Despite the inevitable occurrence of these events, there is good news for people in the paths of these natural disasters.

The power sector is not waiting around to reactively address damage from the next severe weather event. Hurricanes or extreme heat may be seasonal, but preparation is not.

A coalition of more than 40 energy providers and system operators — along with 100 academics, policymakers, non-profits, government agencies and others — have worked together to develop a data-driven, science-based framework to improve the resilience and reliability of the power system.

The public Climate READi framework, issued and developed by independent, non-profit energy R&D institute EPRI, guides energy companies in assessing risk and vulnerability in the energy system across a wide variety of weather and climate conditions. In addition, utilities, regulators and other stakeholders can use this set of guidance, references and tools to evaluate local hazards, prioritize investments and adapt the evolving electric system to the climate of the future.

The framework, developed over the past three years, highlights how factoring climate risk into investment decisions is a cost-effective means of increasing energy systems' resilience to climate hazards. Knowing the exposure of assets and systems to current and future climate hazards and pinpointing system vulnerabilities at the asset and company level is key for determining which adaptation strategies to consider for any region. It’s important to note there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, as a West Coast utility may need to prepare against wildfires versus an East Coast utility, which may more frequently deal with ice storms. Having different options for what best suits individual utilities will be key to proactive planning for these events.

So how do companies conduct climate-informed planning and analysis?

• First, the framework recommends having a dedicated team with clear ownership and responsibility. Once in place, the framework recommends the team begin with in-depth and iterative scoping, setting expectations among internal and external stakeholders to define the bounds and objectives of the assessment, while also integrating information from previous impacts of weather and climate events on asset or system performance. This involves the selection of climate data and vulnerability information that characterizes baseline conditions and captures the range of expected future conditions.
• Second, the framework recommends conducting model-based evaluations across an integrated modeling platform, where data and assumptions are used consistently throughout. The company may also want to review its existing integrated resource plans, regulatory filings, or other planning documents to identify plausible future configurations of its portfolio.
• Third, it is important to ensure the load data used for planning and evaluation reflects the weather dependency for the selected conditions and technologies being evaluated.
• Lastly, the framework recommends comparing baseline model results to results with the various adaptations in place to determine the anticipated benefits and cost effectiveness of options under consideration. This comparison can be used to justify and prioritize adaptation investments.

Work has and will continue to be underway to proactively plan for the weather of the future. For example, last year, researchers from EPRI and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory mapped how future hurricanes could affect power outage risk. Working with PNNL, we combined synthetic hurricane tracks in a future climate with a predictive power outage model, developed using power outage data from 23 historical hurricanes that affected the continental United States and Puerto Rico between 2016 and 2023. This allowed us to assess changes in outage risk in the 2066-2100 timeframe compared to today’s climate. According to the models, the average person in the metropolitan areas of Houston, New Orleans and Boston could see expected outage events increase by more than 70% per decade, while Miami residents may see a 119% increase.

As this analysis shows, there isn’t one clear answer, since different locations have different needs and weather conditions. Regardless of where you live, it’s clear that a common, consistent and collaborative framework for physical climate risk — and available to all parties — is needed to ensure the reliable, resilient and affordable power system of the future for all of us.