Speaker 1: (00:00)
All over the world. Climate change is starting to affect daily life from devastating cyclones and Madagascar to fire storms in the Pacific Northwest. And a new reports finds that all over the us. As summers get hotter, beating the heat will drain energy supplies and leave us with days without power or air condition. The research paper published in the online journal Earth's future predicts Southern California will experience at least seven days without power each summer. In the next decade. Joining me is the studies lead author, Renee Ober and environmental engineer at Penn state university and Renee. Welcome to the
Speaker 2: (00:41)
Pro. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: (00:43)
How would a 1.5 Celsius rise in global temperature and that works out to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. How would that strain California's energy grid?
Speaker 2: (00:53)
Yeah, so, uh, one and a half degrees Celsius increase is sort of across the global main temperature. And so depending on the location, or even like the, if there's a heat wave, it could be, you know, even higher for California. And so what we're seeing is that with those rising temperatures, that California is expected to see, uh, 4% increase in air conditioning use beyond what they're already doing and that if it occurs during a heat wave or during wildfire season, it could actually lead to rolling blackouts even more frequent than what we've seen in the last couple years.
Speaker 1: (01:32)
How many days of rolling blackouts could there be in California under these circumstances?
Speaker 2: (01:39)
So our analysis looked at the hypothetical situation where no changes are made to our current grid. So it's kind of the worst case scenario. What happens if we don't adapt to this warmer future? And we found that California could experience about seven days, uh, without air conditioning under these, um, potentially rolling blackouts, but also, uh, could be more the blackouts going beyond just a couple hours and lasting for, you know, a day or two at a time.
Speaker 1: (02:09)
You also know one thing going for California is that we have comparatively high efficiency standards for home air conditioners. Tell us more about that.
Speaker 2: (02:19)
Yeah. So one of the potential ways that we could mitigate this, uh, increase in demand is to try to improve how efficient our technology is. So when you increase the efficiency of air conditioners, you can use more air conditioning, you can use it more often, but it uses the same amount or even less electricity. And so we look to see how much more efficient the standard air conditioner would need E across the states. And we found that with California, it's less than 1% more efficient. So it's almost, uh, negligible. And that's likely because California is leading the country in these requirements. So any new building and even some older buildings that are getting retrofitted need to have a certain standard of efficiency and that's driving, uh, the market in California, whereas other states are sort of are behind in that respect. And so, um, states, we found that Louisiana and Arkansas up to 8% in the average air conditioner, whereas California, like I said, less than 1%.
Speaker 1: (03:24)
Now, when does your study predict summer blackouts? Like these would start to happen.
Speaker 2: (03:30)
So that sort of time period has a little bit of, you know, wiggle room. It, a lot of it depends on how quickly we can do climate change mitigation. And if we continue Toit CO2, but the most recent I P C C report is estimating that we will surpass that one and a half degree Celsius threshold in the 2030, so potentially 10 to 15 years from now.
Speaker 1: (03:56)
And hows, does the scenario change if there's a two, two degrees Celsius increase in warming?
Speaker 2: (04:02)
Yeah. So that is actually what I think is one of the most interesting parts of this study is that with just a half degree more warming, we're seeing really, uh, intense changes, particularly in areas like the Midwest. And so under one and a half degrees of warming, we estimated a 4% increase in air conditioning use, but if we let climate change continue to happen, and we continue to emit to the point where we get to two degrees of warming, then in the Midwest air air conditioning demand jumps up by 13%. And so we're tripling how much more of a range we're seeing in just one half of a degree. And so it really like sort of, for me, it brings home the importance of trying to mitigate temperature and trying to maintain a lower temperature threshold because we'll start to see increasingly extreme, uh, results from just minor temperature changes as we continue to get warmer,
Speaker 1: (05:07)
What would be the human toll of these summer days without power?
Speaker 2: (05:12)
Yeah. So it's hard to sort of quantify that, but what we know is that when we have really extreme heat, that the most vulnerable populations tend to be in lower income neighborhoods or the elderly or even, um, other marginalized groups that have traditionally lived in areas with poor housing, or just generally don't have the capacity to where the financial ability to purchase air conditioning or find another place like a hotel or, uh, a pool where they can cool off during these heat waves. So while it's really hard to quantify what it might mean in exact numbers, what we do know is that although the average household might experience, you know, eight days without air conditioning, in reality, the brunt of that is going to be faced by our vulnerable or marginalized communities while others can find other places to go.
Speaker 1: (06:12)
As you say, some people in, uh, lower income communities may not even have air conditioning to begin with. And as that heat rises, people can die.
Speaker 2: (06:24)
Yeah. So it's, uh, becomes a very serious public health issue. And it also, it, and it becomes really hard to, to calculate that like the deaths cuz of heat, heat waves, heat intensity are probably very underestimated because it's really hard to figure out, you know, was it the heat or was it, you know, some other comorbidity that they had often due to, you know, no fault their own, just where they happen to live and whether or not we can attribute that to heat or
Speaker 1: (06:59)
Not. Renee, what does this study call for? Does a call for increased efforts to stop global warming or stronger energy grids to handle increased demand.
Speaker 2: (07:10)
It's both. And so what we really want is part of our goal in looking at sort of the household, uh, level air condition use, but also trying to look at across the us to compare different states is to, to try to demonstrate that these changes, these impacts of climate change will impact local people like they'll impact yourself and your family and your neighbors. And so we're our hope is that if we can show some tangible, like impacts to how it might affect you, rather than something abstract that's off in the far future, that we might generate some more like grassroots effort and, and try to get some policy passed to not only, uh, mitigate climate change and reduce our emissions, but also strengthen our grid because we can't just rely on one or the other. We need to be adapting, but also working towards mitigation at the same time.
Speaker 1: (08:06)
I've been speaking with Renee OER and environmental engineer at Penn state university. Renee. Thank you so much. Thank you.
