As Storm Eowyn rolled over the British Isles on Friday 24th January 2025, the UK Met Office issued a rare ‘red weather’ warning [1] – the highest level of alert – and the Storm duly brought fierce winds across Ireland and Scotland, with windspeeds of up to 114 mph (183 km/h), the highest ever recorded in Ireland.
In Northern Ireland, where winds peaked at the lower speed of 92 mph (148 km/h) the damage has nonetheless been widespread, leaving behind over 2,300 road obstructions, more than 100 damaged schools and 240,000 homes, farms and businesses without power[2] - that is more than one-quarter of all power connections![3] As of Monday 27th, 74,000 remained without power and, according to the NIE Networks – the sole electricity network operator – some households are likely to remain without electricity until Monday 3rd February – in all, a period of 10 days.
Consider the impact of living without electricity for 10 days in a row. A lack of power means no lights and, for many households, no heating or hot water, as boiler pumps cease. It also means a lack of cooking facilities if you don't use gas, a failure of short- and long-term food storage (i.e. refrigeration and freezers), and possibly even a lack of clean drinking water (for those relying on pumped water from wells, or for where pumping stations have lost power). Furthermore, it means no computer access to work or study from home, access government or banking services and so on. For the substantial portion of households without a landline, it may mean being cut off from their social circle, health and care services and emergency services [4] as they cannot charge their mobile phones. These problems, of course, cause further impacts on economic activity, social connectivity and health, particularly for the most vulnerable households.
My household has been lucky. Our lights have stayed on – even as our neighbours in the surrounding countryside have been dark all weekend – as our home’s power comes directly from our landlord’s dairy farm and it has a backup generator for precisely this kind of event.
As I contemplated our fortunate situation, I thought it worth highlighting how Storm Eowyn has demonstrated the vulnerability of our existing, centralized power infrastructure to climate shocks – a vulnerability that, due to our total dependence on that infrastructure, extends throughout our society. As such, in our government policy-making, business preparedness and personal decision-making, we all need to consider climate resilience alongside climate mitigation. For example, it is not enough to just encourage households, farms and businesses to electrify cooking, heating and transportation on our quest to achieve net zero emissions. Of course this will help to eliminate fossil fuel pollution; however, as long as this clean electricity continues to be generated and delivered via large, centralized systems (such as offshore wind farms, solar farms or nuclear power plants) the system will remain vulnerable to climate shocks.
We can, however, design policies and take decisions to promote climate mitigation with climate resilience built in. Moving our electricity delivery system to a more distributed, small-scale power generation and storage model – in other words, with more homes, farms and businesses equipped to generate and store their own power from solar and wind, and/or to be connected to localized grids – would not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power consumption but would reduce individual and community exposure to power loss. Furthermore, by reducing the number of disconnections, this would also mean faster reconnection for those that do lose electricity. In turn, this would lead to multiple societal co-benefits for health, wellbeing and economic activity.
We know that climate shocks like Storm Eowyn are only going to get worse over time: as our climate warms, we will get more violent storms, more often, as the warmer atmosphere and oceans provide a larger reservoir of heat (energy) to fuel these events. Governments, businesses and individuals therefore all need to consider how best to rebuild and redesign for the climate of the future, even as we seek to reduce our impacts.
[1] https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/news-and-media/media-centre/weather-and-climate-news/2025/red-weather-warnings-issued-with-damaging-winds-forecast-for-storm-eowyn
[2] https://news.sky.com/story/record-winds-of-114mph-recorded-as-storm-eowyn-hits-the-uk-and-ireland-13295326
[3] NIE Networks serves approximately 910,000 homes, farms and businesses in Northern Ireland: https://www.nienetworks.co.uk/about-us
[4] In October 2023, 40% of households in Northern Ireland had no landline, according to the Department of Health (https://dhcni.hscni.net/news/telephone-land-lines-are-going-digital/)
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