This paper examines the increasing risks that bushfires and extreme weather events pose to electricity infrastructure and related systems, including climate-induced threats such as storms, floods, and heatwaves. These events cause extensive damage to transmission and distribution networks, leading to widespread blackouts, asset deterioration, and economic losses. Additionally, disruptions to electricity networks have broader societal implications, such as public health risks, transport failures, and economic instability, necessitating urgent adaptation measures. This paper highlights that traditional electricity infrastructure was designed for historical weather patterns and lacks the resilience needed to cope with these emerging climate threats. As part of this research, targeted consultations with key stakeholders were carried out with a view to gaining a deeper insight into the challenges faced by utilities in tackling resilience-related problems. The outcome of the consultations was a set of key findings, which were analysed and synthesised to provide relevant policy and technical recommendations for enhancing electricity infrastructure resilience. This paper puts forward a comprehensive set of recommendations aimed at fortifying Australia's electricity infrastructure resilience. Below is a summary of the key recommended actions. • Embed Resilience in Law and Regulation: Amend fundamental energy legislation to formally recognise resilience as a core objective, on par with reliability and affordability. This legal recognition would empower regulators to prioritise and enforce climate adaptation measures. In tandem, introduce an explicit statutory duty of care requiring electricity network providers to assess foreseeable climate risks and take reasonable steps to manage them. This places accountability on industry for proactive resilience planning. • Reform Funding and Incentive Structures: Establish funding mechanisms that support smaller-scale, pre-emptive resilience investments and streamline the regulatory approval process for these projects. Currently, networks can struggle to get funding for preventative works (like strengthening a substation against bushfires) under rules favouring large post-event capital projects. This paper recommends creating dedicated resilience funding allowances and simplifying the application and reporting requirements, especially for urgent minor works. • Enhance Coordination and Governance: Develop legal and regulatory mechanisms to enable joint planning and co-funded resilience projects across multiple network entities and jurisdictions. This paper suggests removing barriers that currently prevent Transmission and Distribution companies from pooling resources on resilience initiatives that span regions. A formal framework for cross-entity collaboration would encourage more strategic, system-wide interventions (such as strengthening key interstate interconnectors or sharing backup resources). Furthermore, this paper calls for establishing a national advisory body or expert panel on resilience that can guide consistent metric-setting, share best practices, and advise governments on emerging risks. • Strengthen Technical and Operational Measures: This paper advises recalibrating certain technical standards and practices to align with climate realities. For example, updating asset life and maintenance assumptions used in planning models – recognising that equipment may need replacement or reinforcement sooner under harsher conditions. Regulatory guidance should encourage more frequent asset inspections and upgrades in high-risk zones (such as coastal, bushfire-prone, or heat-vulnerable areas). This paper also recommends expanding the interconnectedness and flexibility of the grid. Enhancing inter-state energy transfer capabilities will allow surplus power to be rerouted to areas in need during emergencies, improving overall resilience and efficiency. Support for pilot projects in grid decentralisation (like community microgrids, distributed energy resources capable of islanding during disruptions, or distribution networks with islanding capabilities) is suggested as well, since localised energy systems can keep critical services powered even if the main grid is compromised. Taken together, these recommendations form a robust legal and policy roadmap complemented by practical engineering actions. They aim to align Australia's energy governance with the imperatives of a changing climate, ensuring that regulatory settings incentivise resilience and that network operators have the guidance and resources needed to implement protective measures.
Azuatalam et al. (Fri,) studied this question.