Power After the Storm

Executive Summary

The nation's power grid is highly vulnerable to damage and prolonged outages during extreme weather. Utility customers are bearing the consequences. The central United States has seen much of such damaging weather extremes, whether the severe thunderstorms that roll in over the Great Plains, leaving downed trees and power lines in their wake, the Upper Midwest winter storms, producing ice buildup that interferes with electricity transmission, or the rain-heavy Gulf Coast hurricanes that bring down utility poles and flood substations. These expansive extreme weather events can leave residents across the region without power for days and even weeks, at times stranded in dangerous conditions while increasingly burdened with grid repair and recovery costs.

Unfortunately, this region faces more extreme weather events in the years to come as we continue to burn fossil fuels that cause our climate to change and make these extreme events more likely. For a climate-changed future, we need a resilient grid where the physical infrastructure, those who manage it, and those who are served by it would be prepared and able to withstand and recover from storms. A more resilient grid would also lessen the frequency and severity of outages and help ensure that communities benefit equitably from greater reliability.

Such a climate-resilient electricity grid is within reach. Right now, investment decisions are being made for a grid that is expected to reliably serve consumers until 2075 and beyond. As the sector plans and invests in upgrading and building our future grid, making critical choices that consider climate change will mean the difference between an electricity grid sturdy enough to keep the power on for millions of homes and businesses versus greater challenges from electricity disruptions and unaffordable energy costs.

In this report, we analyze the last decade of power outage data in the central United States, alongside media reports and peer-reviewed science, to explore three key questions:

1. Which extreme weather events have been most consequential for power outages over the last decade?

2. What can we learn about the patterns of impacts from the worst of these outage events?

3. How are the extreme weather events most consequential for power outages in this region expected to change because of climate change?

To chart a path toward a more equitable, climate-resilient grid, we look at what climate science is telling us about extreme weather events and their effect on power outages in this vulnerable region of the nation. Our analysis shows the following:

Over the last decade, all the 100 worst outage days in the central United States were caused by extreme weather. Every one of the study region's top 100 outage days between 2014-2024, as measured in maximum number of customers affected, was associated with a large-scale extreme weather event. Severe thunderstorms (including derechos, or, long lines of severe thunderstorms leaving widespread damage from high winds), hurricanes, and severe winter storms with large footprints damaged infrastructure, leaving thousands—and at times, hundreds of thousands—of customers without power. The most damaging power outages were nearly always caused by compounding events, such as a winter storm with a tornado outbreak or a hurricane with coastal and inland flooding.

Over the study period, the ten worst outage events in the region all occurred since 2020. Many of them were compound extremes, and some occurred one after another, leaving little time for recovery and deepening social inequities. This record of outages provides a preview of what is to come: As the climate warms, extreme weather events are expected to become both more frequent and more severe. The inequities that leave some communities more vulnerable to power outages today are at risk of being amplified in communities marginalized by protracted legacies of under- and disinvestment. Investing in grid resilience is inseparable from investing in energy justice so that communities historically least prepared to withstand and recover from extreme events are not left vulnerable to even greater future risks due to outages.

The extreme weather events that are expected to worsen across the central United States heighten the need for science-based resilience planning. Aspects of each kind of extreme weather event most consequential for power outages are expected to worsen in the coming decades as the climate continues to change. Severe thunderstorm activity is projected to increase in much of the region, hurricanes that make landfall are projected to have a higher rate of rainfall, and snowstorms may intensify in the places they still occur. To avoid a concurrent increase in major power outages, it is critical that decisionmakers engage now in science-based resilience planning.

Power sector actors at all levels have a role to play in building grid resilience. Depending on the investments needed, the responsibility for a more climate-resilient grid falls on a number of actors, including local utilities, states, regional grid operators, and federal regulators. To best prepare the region's power grid and the communities affected by outages for climate change, we recommend the following three key resilience-building strategies:

• Understand the risks posed by extreme weather and climate change. Climate risk assessments must be specifically focused on the electricity sector and use the best-available and most up-to-date forward-looking science to understand the risks to the grid and how these risks should be mitigated or addressed.

• Accelerate the transition to an electricity grid powered by clean energy. Despite a current lack of federal leadership, states and utilities must continue to reduce planet-warming emissions to decrease the risk of ever-worsening extreme weather risks. The more quickly society decarbonizes, the less intense the impacts of climate change will be.

• Engage with communities. Properly building an equitable and resilient electric grid requires meaningful community participation and ownership in decisionmaking to ensure that the investments meet the needs of all the communities the grid serves.