Beyond carbon: Unveiling vulnerabilities of the transportation fuel system for climate resilience
Sarah Lindbergh, Yiyi He, John Radke
Abstract
Carbon-centric policies that omit the Transportation Fuel System (TFS) vulnerabilities as a critical infrastructure (CI) will result in siloed climate resilience policies for future transportation energy systems. Based on CI resilience, disaster risk reduction, supply chain sustainability, energy and climate adaptation literature, this study seeks to learn from the contemporary TFS vulnerabilities to avoid perpetuating them in a future climate-resilient, equitable, and carbon free transportation energy system. A unique combination of five vulnerability traits is identified: unprecedented transition; complex and widespread interdependencies; hazardous materials; complex organizational networks; and path-dependency. Emblematic TFS-related disasters in the U.S., and the projected impact of wildfires and flooding to the sector in California are explored to illustrate these vulnerabilities and their environmental justice (EJ) issues. We argue that our lack of knowledge of CI sociotechnical networks is a key vulnerability that jeopardizes societal goals of decarbonization policies, notably those concerning (1) procedural justice and (2) the identification of transportation energy services critical users such as emergency response. We propose framing the TFS as a social, technical, and environmental system to promote complex system governance that is more capable of identifying strategic partnerships and coalitions for CI resilience, and developing methods to study and implement climate risk transparency and adaptation attribution that advances procedural aspects of EJ for the transitional and future TFS.