Increasing extreme weather brings more power outages, especially in rural areas, where utilities often adapt slowly

Change in average annual power outage minutes per utility customer, 2013-15 compared to 2018-20 average.
Chart by The Washington Post; click on the image to enlarge it.

"Across the nation, severe weather fueled by climate change is pushing aging electrical systems past their limits, often with deadly results. Last year, the average American home endured more than eight hours without power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — more than double the outage time five years ago," Douglas MacMillan and Will Englund report for The Washington Post. However, "State officials are reluctant to ask ratepayers to foot the bill for investments experts say are needed to fortify the grid against increasingly severe weather."

Already in 2021, Americans have dealt with a near-record 18 weather or climate disasters that cost at least $1 billion. Such disasters have increased in frequency and power in recent years. "An analysis by independent climate research group Climate Central shows the average time between billion-dollar disasters has dropped from 82 days in the 1980s to just 18 days on average in the past five years (2016-2020)," Kerrin Jeromin reports for the Post.

Rural residents are likely to get hit harder by power outages after such disasters; for example, freak winter weather left many without power for weeks in Texas this February, and rural residents of the Florida panhandle dealt with the same issue in 2018 after Hurricane Michael.

"As storms grow fiercer and more frequent, environmental groups are pushing states to completely reimagine the electrical grid, incorporating more batteries, renewable energy sources and localized systems known as 'microgrids,' which they say could reduce the incidence of wide-scale outages. Utility companies have proposed their own storm-proofing measures, including burying power lines underground," MacMillan and Englund report. State regulators have mostly rejected these ideas, saying they must keep utility bills affordable.

But inaction is an expensive prospect too. In New York, one of the few states where regulators have assessed the risk of climate change, a report by utility giant Con Edison estimated that climate risks could cost the company $5.2 billion by 2050, MacMillan and Englund report.

Many member-customers of rural electric cooperatives are pushing for a faster transition to wind and solar, but it's often unpopular notion in rural areas, especially those in which coal is a major economic driver. Solar installations also commonly face opposition from rural residents who worry that it takes up valuable farming and ranching land and stresses local infrastructure.