Madeline Yozwiak, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, will present the EEEP Seminar Series, “Grid Hardening and the Effectiveness of Climate Adaptation in the U.S. Electricity Sector” on March 8, 2026.
Abstract:
A central question in climate economics is how well society can adapt to climate change. In this paper, Madeline Yozwiak studies the effectiveness of climate adaptation in a critical sector: the electricity system. Over the last decade, U.S. utilities have spent billions on “grid hardening” in an effort to increase the reliability of the electricity grid during extreme weather events. In this paper, Yozwiak evaluates the effectiveness of grid hardening in the context of tropical cyclones and Florida, which was the first state to pass grid hardening legislation in 2006. Using a spatial regression discontinuity, Yozwiak compares the severity of power outages among Florida border counties, which received grid hardening investment, to their immediate neighbors in Alabama and Georgia, which did not, when the counties are exposed to the same “dose” of tropical cyclone winds. Yozwiak’s early results suggest that hardening did not lead to a detectable improvement in reliability in the Florida distribution system, highlighting a risk for regulators as utility investment in hardening continues to increase.”
Bio:
Madeline Yozwiak is a postdoc in the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University, part of the ExTx Consortium on transmission. Yozwiak studies the intersection of electricity markets, climate change, and utility regulation. Yozwiak received her PhD in Public Affairs from Indiana University Bloomington in 2025, where she was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and a member of the Energy Justice Lab. Yozwiak also holds a BS in Physics from Yale University.”