Calls for more 'urgency' in climate-proofing critical infrastructure - New Civil Engineer

Calls for more 'urgency' in climate-proofing critical infrastructure | New Civil Engineer
The government is coming under mounting pressure to adapt the UK’s national critical infrastructure (CIN) to the risks of climate change.

Dame Margaret Beckett, chair of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) has said she is concerned the government is not treating the issue with enough “urgency”.

In particular, concern was raised over the pace of action on regulations on resilience for operators of CNI, and the level of ambition in the government's Resilience Framework published at the end of last year.

The framework commits to reviewing existing regulations on resilience by 2030, but Dame Beckett accused the government of “choosing to delay” the introduction of new regulations.

“This is akin to organising a fire safety awareness course to respond to a blazing fire”, she said, adding: “Ministers should accelerate this timetable to ensure that our vital infrastructure is properly adapted to the changing climate, and resilient to the more frequent extreme weather events that we are already experiencing, both globally and in the UK.”

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) said the resilience framework was a welcome step forward, but that government needed an urgent action plan that "gives infrastructure operators clarity" about what its ambitions mean in practice, and allows resilience to be factored into policymaking now.

It added: "With a limited window of opportunity to define standards ahead of impending price control processes, a failure to act with pace risks much-needed investments being pushed into the mid-2030s.”

It comes as the government this week published its response to a JCNSS’ report last year, titled Readiness for storms ahead? Critical national infrastructure in an age of climate change.

The report urges ministers to “get a grip” on major national security risks posed by the effects of climate change. It describes the UK's CNI as "very vulnerable to extreme weather and other effects of climate change, such as sea level rises".

The report highlights how major power outages, landslides, buckling train lines and flooding of infrastructure sites are all “realistic scenarios”, and can lead to “cascading” risks affecting other CNI sectors.

These challenges came to light during Storm Arwen last November, when major power outages left some without access to their digital land lines, and no way of contacting emergency services.

According to the report, examples like this "show that poor adaptation to climate change is a major threat to the UK’s national security and prosperity".

Its recommendations include bringing in a “full set” of resilience standards every five years for energy, water, digital, road and rail.

It also calls for CNI regulators to require their operators to develop long-term resilience strategies and for CNI to be tested regularly against a wide range of stresses, including interdependencies.

In its response, the government highlighted work by the Cabinet Office, the new Department for Energy and Net Zero and the Met Office to identify interdependencies between infrastructure sectors, work on energy resilience, and improvements to climate prediction.

It also said the CNI Knowledge Base will provide a “step change” in how the government captures, visualises and understands linkages and interdependencies across the UK’s most critical infrastructure.

In a piece for NCE last week, Chris Medland wrote how underinvestment in the maintenance and upgrading of infrastructure has put the UK at "greater risk" to interconnected and sometimes irreversible impacts of climate change.

The One-World Design Architects director pointed out despite climate change being the most serious risk to the UK’s security and infrastructure, infrastructure adaptation is not the focus of any government department and "no progress is being made on the long-awaited National Resilience Strategy (NRS)".

The Cabinet Office was approached for comment.

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