Link: The world’s power grids are failing as the planet warms

Hotter summers mean spikes in demand for cooling, as high temperatures cause wires to sag and risk sparking forest fires. Upgrades to power infrastructure haven’t kept pace, even as efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels make electricity distribution more crucial. Triggered by a surge in consumption and unstable supply links, the blackout in Montenegro in late June knocked out grids in neighboring countries and wreaked havoc on households, hospitals and beach bars. The incident in the Balkans has been repeated around the world. Millions of households in Houston suffered blackouts in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl last week, losing air conditioning as sweltering heat followed the storm. Hitting emerging and developed economies, outages from Ecuador to India in recent weeks offer a foretaste of coming disruption. The climate crisis exposes electricity networks to flash floods ripping down transmission towers, droughts drying up hydroelectric reservoirs and demand spikes from cooling during searing heat. "The whole power system was built and designed in one climatic era and now is being asked to work in a different climatic era,” said Michael Webber, a professor of energy at the University of Texas at Austin. "It just means more things can go wrong.” #

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Yoooo, this is a quick note on a link that made me go, WTF? Find all past links here.