Extreme events like freezing rain, forest fires and high winds put electrical power grids at risk and can cause considerable damage. This is a major challenge for Quebec and Canada in the context of climate change, making an adaptation process necessary.
Across Canada, the organizations responsible for electricity provision have quickly become aware of this reality. Several companies, including Hydro-Québec, have developed strategies to define their objectives and actions in terms of climate change adaptation.
This raises many questions:
Are the adaptation solutions implemented achieving the expected results?
Do they reduce the risk to our communities?
Do they target the most vulnerable populations and areas?
Establishing robust evaluation systems for the climate change adaptation measures taken is essential for our climate resilience. An innovative pan-Canadian project is addressing this issue.
Towards a tracking system for the electrical power industry’s adaptation
Electrical power companies have an impressive amount of data, indicators and standards to keep their infrastructure reliable. The challenge is to use these resources to improve the evaluation and monitoring of climate change adaptation.
That’s the thinking behind the project entitled “Tracking adaptation progress in the Canadian electricity sector.” This project, funded by Ouranos in 2024 and launched in collaboration with Hydro-Québec, Ontario Power Generation and Manitoba Hydro, aims to:
Deepen scientific understanding of how climate change adaptation monitoring and evaluation contributes to adaptation governance and risk reduction
Develop an adaptation monitoring and evaluation system for Canada’s electricity sector that is aligned with best practices and emerging climate risk reporting requirements
Advance the understanding of adaptation tracking in business planning and decision-making processes
A practical result of this project will be a prototype system for monitoring and evaluating the electricity sector’s climate change adaptation process. This will not only improve energy resilience, but also inform the implementation of such processes for other critical infrastructure facing climate challenges.
Effective tracking not only makes it possible to assess progress, but also to adjust the adaptation measures taken based on the results obtained. Ultimately, this will make our communities and economies more resilient.
Following international examples
In the initial phase, the project will draw inspiration from international experiences by conducting a literature review on risk reporting policies and practices.
Some pioneering countries such as the United Kingdom and Norway have already developed industry-specific methods including quantitative indicators. Based on surveys and focus groups, these examples offer insight into perceptions and experiences in implementing adaptation measures.
In Canada, a few electrical power companies have also begun work on climate change adaptation. However, the tracking of the adaptation measures taken has only just begun, which limits its ability to assess long-term effectiveness.
Why is it hard to measure adaptation?
The difficulty of monitoring and evaluating adaptation measures lies in the many aspects of this approach:
The heterogeneity of the data complicates the establishment of standard indicators.
The benefits of adaptation are sometimes only seen over the long term, making it difficult to evaluate them immediately.
The lack of standardization limits the comparability of results on a larger scale.
The interdependence of socio-economic, environmental and technological factors makes it hard to identify specific indicators.
In comparison, climate change mitigation is much easier to measure, as there are quantifiable and universal indicators like CO2 concentration.
