Session Description
As nations accelerate the shift from fossil fuels to low carbon energy, impact assessors confront a new reality: weather- and climate-dependent renewables are variable, uncertain, and often non-dispatchable. This session explores how these characteristics ripple through the reliability, affordability, equity, and environmental performance of future energy systems, and how impact assessment (IA) can capture the feedbacks between mitigation choices and adaptation needs across spatial and temporal scales. We will examine “interactive” dynamics: how mitigation pathways (e.g., rapid solar and wind deployment, electrification, green hydrogen) alter exposure and sensitivity to climate hazards, and how adaptation measures (e.g., grid hardening, storage, demand flexibility, microgrids) shape the feasibility, costs, and impacts of deep decarbonization.
Bridging practice and research, speakers will present academic or case studies that integrate climate projections with energy-system planning under uncertainty, highlighting methods such as probabilistic risk assessment, robust decision making, adaptive pathways, and scenario discovery. We will showcase tools including geospatial IA, cumulative effects assessment, socio-economic and distributional analysis, life-cycle assessment for storage and transmission, and system-of-systems approaches linking energy, water, transport, and buildings.
The session targets IA practitioners, regulators, utilities, developers, financiers, and civil society seeking rigorous, decision-relevant assessments that keep pace with the intertwined challenges of climate mitigation and adaptation.
Session Summary
We explore how climate adaptation interacts with mitigation pathways in future energy systems. IA methods and case studies will integrate climate projections, uncertainty, and equity to evaluate resilience, decarbonization and cumulative impacts, offering practical frameworks for decision ready impact assessments.
Session Chair
Yuan Xu
The Chinese University of Hong Kong & Hong Kong Institute of Environmental Impact Assessment
China
Session Co-chair
Xingcheng Lu
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
China