WATT ABOUT IT: CLIMATE RESILIENCE IN THE ELECTRIC UTILITY SECTOR--HOW STATE REGULATORS CAN APPLY TORT'S FORESEEABILITY PRINCIPLE TO COMPEL CLIMATE RESILIENCE.

The electric grid is the bedrock of modern society, but recent climate events have highlighted that it may be vulnerable to extreme weather. One possible explanation for the grid's climate sensitivity is that its vast, interconnected hardware is exposed to the elements and has been built to withstand historical environmental conditions. Due to climate change, however, historical data regarding temperature, precipitation, and extreme weather is no longer reliably predictive of future conditions. As a result, there exists a significant and growing divergence between the level of protection afforded to existing grid infrastructure and the degree of protection needed to withstand climate change. Despite an urgent need to proactively adapt the grid to withstand future conditions, utilities and their supervising regulatory bodies have largely failed to engage in meaningful, forward-looking climate resilience. To combat this problem, this Note offers an original proposal that seeks to introduce a forward-looking mechanism--arising out of tort law's foreseeability principle--into the utility regulatory regime to catalyze climate resilience in the sector. The foreseeability principle will effectively layer a prospective valence over the ratemaking process, thereby forcing regulators and utilities alike to confront climate change's anticipated grid impacts. Under this revamped regulatory structure, utilities that continue to rely on historic climate data will be subject to regulatory holdups during the ratemaking process and may even face legal liability; this Note hypothesizes that the very threat of such setbacks is likely to induce utilities to retire legacy practices and instead embrace forward-looking climate projections as a means of informing proactive resilience measures capable of protecting the grid in the face of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]