Alessa Widmaier (Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge) will be presenting her work on “Hot Rivers, High Bills: Climate Risk to “Reliable” Power”.
About this session: Heatwaves - now more frequent and intense - warm rivers and shrink cooling capacity, forcing nuclear, coal, and gas plants to throttle back or temporarily shut down. The result is localised price spikes (and, in extreme cases, outages) just when electricity demand peaks. This research quantifies the economy-wide ripple effects of these climate-driven supply shocks - how they raise household bills, squeeze firms, and hit lower-income communities hardest - and shows where and when the grid is most vulnerable. Looking ahead, I project future grid instability under different warming scenarios and rank practical adaptations that cut risk at the lowest cost.
When: Monday 10th of November
12.30-12.45 Light lunch and networking
12.45-13.45 Talk and Q&A.
Where: CRASSH meeting room (Alison Richards Building) on the Sidgwick site.
Lunch: A light lunch will be provided, but bring along your drink of choice!
Zoom: You can also join us virtually on Zoom.
The weekly climaTRACES workshops, organised by Kamiar Mohaddes and Henning Zschietzschmann, are attended by a diverse group of people from economics, geography, politics, engineering, business, earth sciences, natural sciences, and history, generating interdisciplinary discussion. One person leads the session, on either a paper they have written, a work in progress, or just an idea they have and would like feedback on. This is also an opportunity for people to find our more about the team on what climaTRACES have been up to and what future events and research projects are being developed.