Book chapter 2026
Advances in Sustainable Energy Systems, Storage, and Conservation Springer Nature · pp. 521–526
Power-plant risks should be assessed not only through financial and technical consequences but also through how disruptions change lifecycle CO₂ emissions and affect progress toward net-zero objectives.
Power plants face political, economic, social, environmental, technological and legal risks across construction, operation and decommissioning. Conventional assessments often express those risks mainly in economic or financial terms. This research proposes a complementary CO₂-based taxonomy that classifies risks according to their causes, consequences, probability and effect on greenhouse-gas emissions. The aim is to make risk analysis more useful for infrastructure decisions that are explicitly tied to net-zero objectives.
How can power-plant risks be identified and classified across the lifecycle according to their probability and impact on CO₂ emissions?
The empirical setting is the Italian electricity sector. The study integrates academic and grey literature, including evidence on power-plant risks in Italy over the previous 50 years, and organizes the evidence in a risk register covering plant type, risk type, causes, consequences, CO₂ references, severity, probability, lifecycle stage and stakeholder relevance. Probability and CO₂ impact are scored qualitatively from 1 to 4. Scientific evidence, grey literature and real-world cases are compared, and the resulting taxonomy is validated through expert interviews.
Risks that look similar in financial or technical terms can have different implications for greenhouse-gas emissions. Classifying risk through additional CO₂ emissions therefore complements conventional severity measures and links infrastructure risk directly to decarbonization objectives.
Different power-plant technologies face different risks, and common risks can have different probabilities and impacts. Construction, operation and decommissioning also create distinct exposure patterns, making a lifecycle view necessary for meaningful comparison.
The framework connects risk categories with causes, consequences, probability, CO₂ impact, lifecycle stage, stakeholder relevance and real-world cases. The hydropower example shows how political, economic, social, environmental, technological and legal risks can be organized within one consistent assessment structure.
The chapter connects infrastructure risk management with the net-zero transition. It shows why environmental consequences should be treated as part of the risk structure itself rather than as a separate sustainability assessment added after investment decisions are made.
For policymakers, utilities and infrastructure managers, the taxonomy offers a practical basis for identifying and prioritizing risks according to their emissions consequences. It also provides the risk foundation for later CO₂-based appraisal methods that integrate uncertainty and flexibility in power-plant and energy-infrastructure decisions.
Paravano, A., Locatelli, G., Neri, A., & Cagno, E. (2026). Towards a Net-Zero Infrastructure: A CO₂-Based Taxonomy for Power Plants. In P. Pong (Ed.), Advances in Sustainable Energy Systems, Storage, and Conservation (pp. 521–526). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-98997-1_54
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