Unlocking Investment in Power System Resilience: a Review of current Practices and Recommendations

This paper summarises findings from the innovation project “Whole Energy System Resilience

Vulnerability Assessment”, which reviewed existing regulatory and planning frameworks in the

UK’s electricity sector and engaged with 45 individual stakeholders, including network owners and operators, the energy regulator, alongside academic institutions. Engagement elicited insights into current practices, challenges, and opportunities for embedding resilience into electricity network investment planning. Best practices across infrastructure sectors were examined, such as the UK water sector, which has effectively incorporated long-term climate resilience into its regulations and investments.

Stakeholders stated that current processes for electricity network investment may lack incentives or consideration for long-term resilience. Furthermore, cost-benefit analysis tools do not fully capture resilience value of the whole system, in terms of avoided losses, system interdependencies and customer impacts. Defining and measuring resilience is required for evidence-based investment decisions. The diverse risks, geographies, and customer needs across electricity networks requires a suite of metrics to capture different dimensions of resilience. There is a need to align resilience planning with broader regulatory and policy developments. Embedding resilience into investment decision-making requires a multi-faceted approach that combines technical modelling, economic analysis, stakeholder engagement, regulatory alignment, and cultural change within organisations. This paper advocates for structured and evidence-based transformation of investing in power infrastructure resilience that can be tailored to the needs of different network operators and stakeholders. The following recommendations are proposed as a proof-of-concept framework that can embed and support resilience-oriented investment practices in the power system sector, as well guide next steps for business-as-usual practices across the sector worldwide:

1. Energy scenarios that inform network investment planning to explicitly include climate change.

2. Integration of wider risk management approaches.

3. Embedding a multi capitals (e.g. natural, social, human, environmental) approach into costbenefit analysis.

4. Detailed analysis and understanding of energy system interdependencies, as well as crosssector interdependencies.

5. Adaptive pathway planning to help identify investment needs under high uncertainty.

6. Develop a suite of resilience metrics to support investment decision-making.

7. Utilise modelling tools required to properly test assumptions in existing codes and standards.

8. Make existing codes and standards more flexible to allow for future uncertainties in terms of climate change and rapidly changing energy landscape.