[Themaintainers] Rethinking Infrastructure capital planning for resilient decarbonization

[Varun Adibhatla]

Hello folks,

It's been a while since I've posted here. I hope all are well.
Happy belated Earth Day as well!
I come here today to ask for guidance, feedback, and connections from
yourselves or your networks.

For the past year, I've been working on a grant funded research project on
grid resilience.
Our focus is to help communities (cities, utilities, regulators) make
better capital planning decisions in service of fair & resilient
decarbonization.
Over the past year, we've swimmed through vast amounts of research and
jargon that often involve utility hegemony, regulatory capture, and
activism.

Today, decarbonization policies at the generation and transmission side
are making optimistic strides. We are on our way towards bringing online
many thousands terawatts of renewable energy.
However, the picture at the local / distribution level where most of
the end use is concentrated is limited for the following reasons:

*The risk of unequal outcomes*
Distributed energy generation, community solar and microgrids are inspiring
signals but hard to scale. We think they result in a form of decarbonized
inequality that serves communities with capital, networks, and time to
create their own decarbonized enclaves.

*The risk of fragile outcomes*
Building electrification plans are often blind to utility-level grid
resiliency.
A street that ends up having all electric end-uses
(heating/cooling/cooking/transport) but served by wires on poles is an
incredibly fragile state to be in.

*They risk being unfair to low and middle income residents*
An individualized approach to decarbonization also puts low & moderate
income residents on the hook for paying for stranded assets (i.e.) the gas
utility, who's trade associations have adopted adversarial stances
<https://www.energyandpolicy.org/gas-utilities-greenwashing-to-expand-fossil-fuels-rng-hydrogen/aga-uses-millions-of-dollars-from-utility-customers-to-promote-a-fossil-fuel-agenda/>
to citywide electrification while also engaging in rate hikes and
disinformation campaigns that affect the energy-vulnerable.

*The choices that Palo Alto, CA makes*
I find it especially remarkable that even a city like Palo Alto, CA, a
community on the backyard of the venerable Stanford University, that
supposedly represents the vanguard of liberal values AND having the rare
privilege of owning most of its horizontal infrastructure
(roads, water/sewer, energy) has chosen to commit upto $30 Million to
*maintain* its gas distribution network.
Palo Alto could instead plan to be the first truly decarbonized city in
America but their capital plans paint a different picture.

This is why our focus is to improve the ecosystem around capital planning
decisions
towards ensuring that infrastructure capital is planned in a manner that
distributes decarbonization benefits in a manner that is more equal,
resilient, and fair.

At the moment, we are focussed on municipal utilities by creating
resources, tools, data, and consensus-building mechanisms that have not
existed before.

Our barriers are less technical and more political, economic, and cultural.
We would love to talk to anyone who could help us with advice, get
connected to experts,  decision-makers, or funders.

-- 
Thanks,
Varun
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