Unequal power outages induced by natural disasters

作者：Bo Wang, Han Shi, Yueming Qiu, Nana Deng, Destenie Nock, Xingchi Shen, Zhaohua Wang, Yi ‘David’ Wang · 发表于：Nature Communications · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1038/s41467-025-64012-x · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Infrastructure Resilience and Vulnerability Analysis、Disaster Management and Resilience、Agricultural risk and resilience

Natural disasters increasingly threaten energy system reliability. However, little empirical research has examined the unequal impact of such events on power outages. Here, we employ a nationwide high-frequency point-level power outage and natural disasters dataset in China, spanning from 2019 to 2021, to empirically assess the impact of natural disasters on power outages. We focus on the poverty counties, identified by the Chinese government, based on income, infrastructure, geographical location, and other criteria. We find that these impacts of natural disasters on power outage are not distributed evenly between poverty counties (5.19% and 8.96% increase in frequency and duration, respectively) and non-poverty counties (3.80% and 5.34%). Long-term projections under SSP-RCP scenarios suggest that climate change exacerbates the disparity. This paper highlights the need for planners to evaluate disaster-induced outages in vulnerable regions to target climate funds to areas with the utmost necessity.