When I dream about Hurricane Katrina, it always starts with the refrigerators. Kenmore, GE, Whirlpool, Frigidaire, Amana. Hundreds of thousands of these abandoned appliances stood duct-taped shut on the curbs and yards of homes throughout New Orleans. Katrina refrigerators are not the only, or even the most dramatic, example of the perils of power outages in extreme weather. From rancid food to emergency-room nightmares, communities take a punch when the lights go out. The nation’s aging power grid leaves us more susceptible to such risks. And the growing intensity of floods and storms on account of climate change make things even worse. But Katrina was not the only, or even the loudest siren blow. Since that time, storms have smashed or drowned parts of the grid in the Northeast (Hurricane Sandy), Houston (Harvey), the Southeast (Irma), and, most tragically, in Puerto Rico, where in 2018, Hurricane Maria knocked out 80% of the island’s electricity network, causing the largest blackout in U.S. history. In the same decade, catastrophic wildfires in Northern California focused attention on the neglected and antiquated system operated by Pacific Gas & Electric, which is believed to have ignited several devastating blazes over two years. Killing at least 84 people and destroying billions of dollars in property, the fires also required cycles of deliberate blackouts to protect parched forests from even more incendiary failures. In this way, the grid became both a cause and a victim of violent disaster. We need a power grid that is more resilient – one that has the capacity to cope with the kinds of low-frequency, high-impact events like those described above. In this chapter, I hope to show how we might get there. I’ll explain what the grid is, describe some of the grid’s most serious vulnerabilities – emphasizing the link to climate disruption and the outsized risks faced by marginalized groups – and propose some first steps toward making the grid more resilient and more productive for all.

Article 7.1 of the Paris Agreement establishes that parties should aim at enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience, and reducing vulnerability to climate change. While many climate hazards and vulnerabilities are beyond territorial control, a readiness to withstand and recover from them must be delivered locally. This chapter discusses climate-related vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience of the Greater Bay Area of China (GBA), an area that has been identified by the Chinese government as an engine of economic development but which has historically been vulnerable to flooding. After providing a contextual introduction to the GBA project, the chapter reviews key studies on past, current, and future climate trends focusing on meteorological, climatological, hydrological, and geophysical hazards. It then surveys adaptation policies and plans already implemented in GBA cities to assess what works and what does not and where the gaps are. Finally, the discussion focuses on the drivers and barriers for the uptake of technology for flood prevention and for the deployment of emergency responses. The aim of this discussion is to identify the opportunities and risks of technology in building future-ready local skills and citizen engagement for climate resilience. Given the ambitious plans for the GBA to contribute to the economic development of China, existing and projected vulnerabilities to climate hazards and their potential impact on the developed environment and physical infrastructure, business and industry, energy supply, financial services, human health, water resources, and biodiversity may not only hamper GBA plans but also put its businesses and citizens at risk. Technological innovation diminishes this vulnerability, but drivers and barriers to its uptake must be either identified and enhanced or removed accordingly.