Living with Climate Change: The Polar Vortex

Find out more about the briefings in this series below:

Integrating Equity into Emergency Management

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to view a briefing series on strategies, policies, and programs preparing communities around the country for four major climate threats: polar vortices, sea level rise, wildfires, and extreme heat. Experts and practitioners will highlight the unique challenges these climate threats present along with strategies to overcome them.

The polar vortex is an area of low-pressure, frigid air that usually exists around the North Pole. The polar vortex is held in place by the Earth’s rotation and temperature differences between the Arctic and mid-latitudes. Changes in temperature differences can make the polar vortex expand to more southern latitudes. While this phenomenon occurs naturally, climate change is expected to impact the frequency and severity of polar vortex events. Communities must consider adaptation strategies to avoid blackouts and improve overall home energy efficiency, as loss of power when temperatures are so low can become deadly—246 people died during the Texas polar vortex freeze in 2021, many from hypothermia.

Panelists discussed the science behind the polar vortex and how the energy grid and other critical infrastructure can be made resilient to this threat.

This briefing is part of a series called Living with Climate Change that ran through July and focused on strategies, policies, and programs preparing communities around the country for four major climate threats: polar vortices, sea level rise, wildfires, extreme heat, and integrating equity into emergency management.

The series ran in parallel with another briefing series, Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions, covering hydrogen, direct air capture, offshore wind, electric vehicle infrastructure build-out, and how start-up accelerators can drive climate action.

Highlights

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The polar vortex is an area of low pressure and cold air at both of the Earth’s poles. In the Northern Hemisphere, it tends to be much farther north than the jet stream, a strong river of wind that separates Arctic air to the north and much warmer air to the south. While the jet stream is present year-round, the polar vortex only occurs in winter. The polar vortex usually does not have much impact on weather beyond the poles, but occasionally the polar vortex becomes disrupted: when the jet stream moves south, cold air from the polar vortex can plunge farther south as well. This is what happened in February 2021.
An area of the Arctic Ocean north of Scandinavia is experiencing strong, prolonged warming. This particular region is right under the polar vortex. Warming in this particular region is leading to more disruptions of the polar vortex, which is expected to cause more unusual winter weather around the Northern Hemisphere.
Extreme cold disproportionately affects the most vulnerable people. People who face health issues during extreme cold events are typically not as well-resourced as those who do not. Wisconsin’s Office of Energy Innovation has been involved with the NAACP’s Just Energy Policies and Practices Action Toolkit to work to address this challenge.
As described in the report, Hours of Safety in Cold Weather, building envelopes are an important component of resilience. A building envelope is the shell that separates the indoors from the outdoors and includes walls, the roof, windows, and doors. The report evaluates how different building envelopes perform in cold weather when the home has lost power.

Dr. Jennifer Francis, Acting Deputy Director and Senior Scientist, Woodwell Climate Research Center

In February 2021, Dallas, Texas, was colder than some areas in Alaska and Greenland. This severe cold event was long-lasting and extended unusually far south.
The jet stream is a strong river of wind about five to nine miles above the Earth’s surface in the Northern Hemisphere. The jet stream is the boundary between the Arctic air to the north and the much warmer air to the south.
The polar vortex is an area of low pressure and cold air at both of the Earth’s poles. It is much higher up in the atmosphere and, in the Northern Hemisphere, tends to be much farther north than the jet stream. While the jet stream is present year-round, the polar vortex only occurs in winter. The polar vortex usually does not have much impact on weather beyond the poles, but occasionally the polar vortex becomes disrupted. This is what happened in February 2021.
All cold events are generally generated in the same way—when the jet stream moves south, cold air from the polar vortex can plunge farther south as well.
The Earth’s climate is not changing uniformly. Generally, the oceans are warming more slowly than lands, and the Arctic is warming about three to four times faster than the global average.
As the Arctic warms, the jet stream is weakened, making it more easily deflected from its usual west-to-east direction by things like mountain ranges and temperature differences across oceans. When the jet stream is weak, it tends to have a wave-like shape.
This can lead to high pressure, blue skies, and dry conditions in the Northwest. If those dry conditions exist for a long time, as they have over the last several years, it can lead to drought, heat waves, and wildfires. During these conditions, the Northeast experiences low pressure, stormy patterns, and precipitation.
These wave-like patterns tend to move slowly from west to east, meaning these weather conditions last a long time. The warming of the Arctic is making these configurations more frequent and making them last longer, leading to more persistent weather conditions and more extreme weather.
An area of the Arctic Ocean north of Scandinavia is experiencing strong, prolonged warming. This particular region is right under the polar vortex. Warming in this particular region is leading to more disruptions of the polar vortex, which is expected to cause more unusual winter weather around the Northern Hemisphere.

Dr. Murali Baggu, Laboratory Program Manager for Grid Integration, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

During the last eight years, there has been a correlation between low temperatures and loss of energy generation.
Natural gas facilities are more vulnerable to lower temperatures compared to other energy generation facilities like steam turbines or coal plants. Therefore, peak power generation, which is often maintained by natural gas, is limited by low temperatures.
NREL used the 2008 and 2011 cold-wave temperatures to model how these same events would impact future grids with different energy mixes based on energy mix projections for 2024, 2036, and 2050.
Since power generation varies geographically, transmission flexibility is important for resilience particularly in the case of cold waves where transmission enables usage of geographically diverse wind and solar resources.
The North American Energy Resilience Model (NAERM) is a multi-national lab effort to identify resilience risks across the energy sector. NAERM is developing a beta version of a cold wave report to provide grid operators awareness of forecast cold weather and winter storms and the associated power system risks.
We need to understand different scenarios of capacity and load growth. We can plan for these issues by examining production, liability, and siting models.
Traditionally, planning has been about how the system can adapt to operational needs, but some of these extreme events have never been considered.
Power systems must model load during cold events to ensure the system is resilient to these extreme load requirements. Despite adequate operational forecasts, resource planning is often insufficient to meet forecast load requirements.
Long duration storage will be important to limit natural gas use during these events and provide peaking capacity as needed.

Megan Levy, Resilience Strategist & Energy Assurance Coordinator, Office of Energy Innovation, Public Service Commission of Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Office of Energy Innovation (OEI) was created by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (P.L. 94-163) and has a broad mandate to save energy.
The last two decades have been the warmest on record in Wisconsin, so it can be difficult to plan for and get stakeholders to think about polar vortices.
Energy efficiency is the first step to resilience. Wisconsin’s Energy Independent Communities (EIC) program initially had goals to produce 25 percent of electricity and fuel needs from renewable resources by 2025, emphasizing local production. Biofuels, renewable natural gas, and methane digesters have been key to this effort. Many EICs have updated their goals to match the governor's goal of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050, which was stated in his 2018 Executive Order 38. The program offers technical assistance to ensure energy efficiency and renewable energy projects are successful.
Petroleum shortage contingency planning at the state level showed that none of Wisconsin’s 72 counties or 11 federally-recognized tribes had robust emergency energy and fuel plans. OEI created the Statewide Assistance for Energy Reliability and Resilience program, which brings together local emergency management and local sustainability planning.
There was a polar vortex in Wisconsin in 2014 that coincided with high energy consumption and low propane inventories across the upper Midwest. Wholesale liquid petroleum prices spiked to $5 per gallon compared to the usual $1 per gallon. Trains could no longer bring in fuel because their brakes did not work in the cold temperatures. About 260,000 residents in Wisconsin use propane for home heating. Many small propane companies went out of business, and the state had to borrow propane from utilities with stockpiles to help heat homes.
During the 2019 polar vortex, Wisconsin was better prepared. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which monitors Wisconsin’s grid, declared an emergency. This time, Wisconsin had infrastructure designed for cold temperatures, including insulated wind turbines and natural gas plants, heat traced pipes, and machinery to break up coal. Unlike in 2014, frozen coal piles could be broken up and used.
Extreme cold disproportionately affects the most vulnerable people. People who face health issues during extreme cold events are typically not as well-resourced as those who do not. OEI has been involved with the NAACP’s Just Energy Policies and Practices Action Toolkit.
OEI wants to emulate the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Energy Storage for Social Equity Initiative, potentially with funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L.117-58).
By researching other state programs, OEI learned how vulnerable the Wisconsin grid is. OEI wanted to understand the feasibility of building clean energy microgrids for critical infrastructure, so it solicited projects to improve equity in communities and advance clean energy. OEI funded 15 projects, including those at a hospital, an airport, a police operations center, a wastewater treatment facility, and on land held by the Bad River Tribe of Lake Superior of Chippewa, which was isolated from the grid in 2018 during extreme weather.
The Town of La Pointe, located on Madeline Island, is working with existing distributed energy generation and propane generators. La Pointe has long been an energy-independent community with a small population and is gradually adding 20-35 KW of generation at a time. It is now looking to link these sources of energy together to provide more resilience.
The Public Service Commission (PSC) collects energy use information for every water utility in Wisconsin, which informs resilience to long-term power outages and helps PSC work with communities to do their own local planning. PSC does the same with wastewater energy use through a partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The Energy Innovation Grant Program allows municipalities, tribal entities, nonprofits, and manufacturers to apply for its grants. In 2020, $7 million was awarded to 32 projects, including 15 renewable energy projects, two clean transportation projects, and six comprehensive planning projects.

Michael Gartman, Manager, Carbon-Free Buildings, RMI

When the grid goes down, most appliances stop working, including both electric and gas appliances, which need electricity to operate. Snow and ice may make roads inaccessible, meaning you cannot get gas for a generator. During Winter Storm Uri (in February 2021), gas stations in Texas did not have backup generators, so people could not get gasoline to heat their homes.
Prolonged cold exposure can be deadly. There are many instances of deaths from cold weather events just from the last three years. Intermediate health impacts include hypothermia, frostbite, and chilblains. Temperatures below 40 degrees Fahrenheit are considered severe.
Low-income residents and renters frequently live in houses that are poorly insulated and drafty. Landlords do not have incentives to improve this housing, and low-income residents often do not have the capital required to make these improvements themselves. Other vulnerable residents include older adults, children, people with prior medical conditions, and people in rural or isolated areas.
Building envelopes are an important component of resilience. A building envelope is the shell that separates the indoors from the outdoors and includes walls, the roof, windows, and doors. Windows and doors are typically the most vulnerable areas of the envelope and should be both insulated and air-sealed appropriately.
RMI designed a model that used real weather events from Duluth, Minnesota, in 2017 and a representative single-family home to demonstrate the impact of different levels of envelope performance. The modeled building envelopes ranged from that of a 1950s era home, to a home built with 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) standards that are common for new residential construction, to a passive house.
As described in RMI’s report, Hours of Safety in Cold Weather, these homes act differently during a power outage. After 12 hours, the 1950s home is already approaching freezing indoors, while the others are at least above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. After 24 hours, the 1980s home has also dropped into a severe cold stress range. After 48 hours, even the 2009 IECC home is in unsafe extreme cold stress territory. After four to five days, the 1950s home is near zero degrees Fahrenheit, whereas the passive house is still at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit seven days later.
Between the most and least efficient building models, there was a 90 percent decrease in the number of hours that occupants were exposed to severe cold over the seven-day period. If the power were to go out for only two to three days, the study showed a similar profound impact of increased home envelope performance.
The benefits of a better building envelope are not sufficiently quantified. We need to quantify these benefits to inform decision-making. The impact on human health and safety must be known, and these impacts should be put into financial terms.
We need to better understand which communities are most vulnerable and which have the most and least hours of safety in an extreme cold event.
If we can gather such data, we could craft insulation guidelines for adoption, establish funding for housing interventions in the most vulnerable homes, and guide disaster response efforts and other preventative health interventions like ensuring that senior living facilities are well-insulated.
Congress can support home resilience by continuing to scale up funding for home retrofits and weatherization programs, by acknowledging that there are unquantified benefits that are necessary for decision-making, and by considering electrification since weatherization can impact indoor air quality (i.e., a tightly-sealed home means you need to be aware of indoor air pollutants like outputs from gas stoves). Congress should also support more stringent new building codes.

Q&A:

Q: Extreme cold events seem to draw less attention than other climate impacts. What are the challenges for people and institutions to be more aware of this threat on an ongoing basis? What policies should be implemented to protect people from these events?

Francis:

The reason this can be challenging to communicate is because this idea that we may see longer-lasting cold spells is less intuitive and a little harder to explain to people especially when overall we are seeing fewer cold temperature records broken and many more high temperature records broken.

Baggu:

Events like wildfires and hurricanes directly impact energy transmission and distribution infrastructure, but extreme cold events directly impact generation infrastructure (for example by lowering pressure in gas lines or icing wind turbines). People do not see the impacts on generation facilities in the same way that they can see impacts on transmission infrastructure like broken power lines.
Greater transmission flexibility, better planning, and resource adequacy will help cold weather event resilience.

Levy:

Insulation is important for hot and cold weather conditions. Insulation is real resilience, particularly for rural areas.
Every time we have an event like winter storm Uri, in Texas, we should continue to talk about resilience. These are not 500-year events anymore. We must emphasize the impacts.
Partnering with local and state emergency managers is important, because they are interested in mitigating hazards before they occur.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has funding called Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC), which can provide support for communities to address extreme cold impacts.

Gartman:

Better quantification of the impacts of sufficient building envelopes can help underscore the importance of this investment. It is important to be responsive and to recognize when the housing stock needs improvement. Seasonal communication campaigns around these events are key because you never feel the problem more acutely than when you are facing it in your own home.

Q: What lessons can be learned from states that routinely experience severe cold weather in terms of infrastructure, homes, and other community resources?

Levy:

The Department of Health Services in Wisconsin has great outreach about what to do, what to keep in your car, and how to stay warm in your home should you lose power. These campaigns happen every year in the spring because of tornado season and ahead of winter for extreme cold.
More partnerships at the state and local level between health, energy, and insurance departments are key.

Gartman:

Some cold weather states and cities have advanced, comprehensive weatherization programs. California's Low-Income Weatherization Program is impressive. The Philadelphia Energy Authority has 17 different funding sources to bolster their weatherization programs that address health and safety measures. We should be doing as much as possible in weatherization efforts.

Francis:

Many states and businesses are now realizing that climate change is presenting significant risks to their infrastructure, assets, and people. They are realizing that it costs significantly less to prepare rather than wait for an extreme event.

Baggu:

States like Iowa and Oklahoma have de-icing capabilities for wind turbines and solar technologies. There are technologies that can ensure wind turbines work as normal during these events. These technologies must also be used in the South, because of the increasing frequency of these events.
These issues must be examined at the system level. It is not just about examining a state’s infrastructure, but also about enabling transmission across states to provide power during these events.

Levy:

The total cost of winter storm Uri is estimated at $300 billion. We must look at this as a larger system issue to put a value on insulation and de-icing. The indirect effects of winter storm Uri in Texas include people in Wisconsin paying 200 percent more for electricity. The resilience measures that clearly make economic sense in the North probably also make sense in the South if you consider the entire system.

Q: How do we align efforts to address impacts of extreme cold with efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Francis:

Mitigation, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, is about the underlying disease whereas adaptation is addressing the symptoms of that disease.
Energy conservation, or energy efficiency, is key. If you conserve a unit of energy, you save not only that unit, but all the energy that goes into creating that unit and getting it to consumers. It has a huge impact and saves money.
The opportunity to make infrastructure more resilient is an opportunity to transition toward renewable energy. Instead of subsidizing the fossil fuel industry by about $600 billion per year with tax dollars, that money could instead be used towards building renewable energy sources.

Baggu:

Grid operations are changing, providing an opportunity for greater renewable energy use.

Levy:

Turning agriculture and livestock waste into energy to make biogas is important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Our ratepayer-funded energy efficiency program allows us to weatherize about 5,000 homes a year, reducing energy sector emissions and creating more resilient communities.

Gartman:

There are many benefits to weatherization, including direct cost savings and opportunities for health and safety interventions for lead, mold, and asbestos. Weatherization creates opportunities for electrification and local jobs.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provides $5 billion for weatherization, which is expected to help roughly half a million households. However, there are 39 million U.S. households eligible for weatherization services. Funding for weatherization should increase.

Q: If there is one action that the federal government could take or support on the issue of extreme cold, what would you want prioritized?

Francis:

The government should end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The money should go towards investments in climate adaptation and renewable energy.

Baggu:

There should be more investment in renewable energy and transmission.

Levy:

The federal government should foster the ability to build microgrids and to modernize grids. It should also support pumped hydro storage, biogas, and local generation.

Gartman: