For engineers, feasibility studies or due diligence evaluations for someone considering investing in a project commonly involve evaluating the output projections for power plants over a period of decades. 20-30+ years would not be uncommon. An investor in a project wants reassurance that their anticipated revenue stream will support a reasonable return on their purchase price.

A thorny question is: shall one incorporate climate change predictions into these projections? Some people are so violently opposed to the possibility of climate change existing that to even bring it up could mark you as “one of them.” Other massive established international capitalist organizations are making billion- (if not trillion-) dollar decisions based on the science. It seems that to ignore the statistics on at least historical trends, to say nothing of predictive models, would be a violation of engineering ethics.

Must engineers, regardless of their political or religious leanings, take these factors into account? Is a requirement to be willing to assess climate change impact for projects an ethical ‘litmus test’?

In this post we will examine some of the potential impacts of including/excluding this analysis into long-term output and revenue projections using a simple case study. Let’s see if temperature rise projections have material impacts.

Continue reading