Stage 4.1 Undertake preparatory work on adaptation options
Guidance
- When starting to identify adaptation options, it is important to think widely, considering the full range of ways that energy sector decision-makers can act, including informational, institutional, and physical / technical measures.
- For instance, they can help to build adaptive capacity by creating better linkages between providers of climate data and energy sector managers, or by upgrading design standards for new energy assets to take account of climate change. They can also undertake physical adaptation actions to build climate resilience of existing energy assets as part of rehabilitation, or provide funding for energy efficiency measures. If the risk assessment has identified an energy demand-supply gap opening up due to climate change, then it is sensible to identify a diverse range of new energy generation assets, opportunities for regional trade, and ways of reducing energy demand, which could contribute to filling the gap.
- Check the country’s national energy strategy to see if it already includes actions that help to build climate resilience.
- In the face of uncertainties about future climate change and its impacts, there are several types of options that are particularly useful:
- ‘No regret’ options, which deliver benefits that exceed their costs, whatever the extent of climate change.
- ‘Low regret’ options are low cost measures with potentially large benefits under climate change and are most often available at the design stage for new assets.
- ‘Win win’ options contribute to climate adaptation and also deliver other benefits.
- Flexible approaches, which involves keeping open options, or implementing options that can be increased in the future, to provide additional adaptation when the need for it, and the performance of adaptation measures is less uncertain.
- It is important to avoid so-called ‘maladaptive’ actions, i.e. actions which will make it more difficult to cope with climate change risks, such as development of long-lived energy assets in an area at high risk of flooding or coastal erosion.
Albania