Entergy: Climate change resiliency and adaptation

Abstract

Effectively managing environmental risks is essential to Entergy’s ability to create long-term, sustainable value for owners, customers, employees, and communities. Given the utility’s first-hand experience with hurricanes, storm surges, and a disappearing coastline, Entergy leaders have strived to gain an understanding of short-term and long-term implications to the region from climate change. Entergy has put its high-level commitments into very specific actions by driving major initiatives to address climate-change adaptation and resilience from a regional perspective. Entergy also is working to improve the resilience of its generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure. An example of an infrastructure improvement project is the rebuilding of Entergy’s gas system in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina—one of the world’s largest gas-rebuild effort in history resulting from a catastrophic event. Entergy believes that stakeholder outreach is instrumental in developing effective strategies to protect and strengthen infrastructure. In collaboration with local universities, Entergy has hosted technical conferences with customers to learn how to prioritize infrastructure investments in ways that align with actions being taken at local levels. These and other outreach efforts demonstrate the importance of working collectively with stakeholders to build resilient communities in a responsible, sustainable, and cost-effective manner.