AI Startups Raise Funding to Help Utilities De-Risk Dangers of Climate Change

California is becoming a poster child for the risks utilities face from climate change, from power lines starting wildfires to heat waves forcing increasingly renewable-powered grids to the brink of system collapse. But utilities around the world are facing similar risks as they seek to decarbonize their generation fleets and make their grids more resilient to extreme weather events that are becoming more extreme and more common. While the costs of mitigating those risks are hard to quantify, they're likely much smaller than the costs of doing nothing and facing the alternatives. We're seeing this calculation reflected in many ways, from massive asset manager BlackRock's decision to move away from investments in coal and other global-warming-causing industries, to the maintenance and planning failures that led to the power-line-sparked wildfires that forced Pacific Gas & Electric into bankruptcy last year. Data -- the lifeblood of investors, insurers and other professional calculators of risk -- can help utilities better identify these climate-change challenges and optimize their methods to mitigate them.