Priorities for the Next Administration
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Grid Resilience: Priorities for the Next Administration www.gridresilience.org Commissioners Co-Chair Co-Chair Commissioner Commissioner General Wesley Clark Congressman Darrell Issa Norman Augustine General Paul Kern (USA, ret.) (R-CA, 2001-2019) (USA, ret.) Commissioner Commissioner Commissioner Special Advisor Kevin Knobloch Gueta Maria Mezzetti, Daniel Poneman John Dodson, Esq. Thayer Energy Research Team, AUI • Bri-Mathias Hodge, University of Colorado Boulder and Adam Cohen (Executive Director of the NCGR), Adam Reed, National Renewable Energy Laboratory Peter Kelly-Detwiler, David Catarious, Matt Schaub, • Eliza Hotchkiss, National Renewable Energy Laboratory Kevin Doran • Cynthia Hsu, National Rural Electric Cooperative Subject Matter Experts Association The Commission extends its gratitude to the following energy subject matter experts, who donated their time • Joshua Johnson, LSI to be interviewed for this report. The opinions and • Hank Kenchington, U.S. Department of Energy (fmr.) recommendations of the Commission do not imply endorsement from any of the experts interviewed. • Jeffrey Logan, National Renewable Energy Laboratory • Richard Mignogna, Renewable & Alternative Energy • Morgan Bazilian, Colorado School of Mines Management • Michael Borcherding, AUI • Edward T. (Tom) Morehouse, Executive Advisor to the • Gerry Cauley, Siemens Energy Business Advisory National Renewable Energy Laboratory • Michael Coe, U.S. Department of Energy • Chris Nelder, Rocky Mountain Institute and The Energy Transition Show • Christopher Clack, Vibrant Clean Energy • Michael Pesin, U.S. Department of Energy • Kenneth Davies, Birch Infrastructure • Adam Rousselle, Renewable Energy Aggregators • Jennifer DeCesaro, U.S. Department of Energy • Stephen Volandt, Vice Chair, National Disaster Resilience • Lindsey Geisler, Centrus Energy Corporation Council, InfraGard • William Hederman, University of Pennsylvania Energy Policy Center, CSIS-Maxwell School Joint Program Table of Contents Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................. 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 5 Section 1: State of the U.S. Electric Power System and Resilience Investments to Date .................................................................................................................................................................. 7 Section 2: Cyber Threats .................................................................................................................... 18 Section 3: Physical Threats ................................................................................................................ 22 Section 4: Electro-Magnetic Pulse Threats .................................................................................... 24 Section 5: Other Threats and Threat Multipliers ........................................................................... 27 Section 6: Recommendations ........................................................................................................... 28 Section 7: Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 48 Commissioner Biographies ................................................................................................................ 50 References ............................................................................................................................................. 57 Executive Summary Our electricity grid’s resilience—its ability to sets of expertise: cybersecurity; industrial control withstand shocks, attacks and damages from systems; artificial intelligence; civil, electrical, and natural events, systemic failures, cyberattack or mechanical engineering; materials science; grid extreme electromagnetic events, both natural and architecture; interdependent systems analysis man-made—has emerged as a major concern for for gas and telecommunications considerations; U.S. national security and a stable civilian society. systems management; public policy design, and Rising international tensions have increased many others. Third, the need to not only react to the risk of directed aggression against civilian emerging threats but to anticipate and regain the populations, and the power grid is both highly lead against potential adversaries requires the vulnerable to attack and attractive to potential innovation and talent of the private technology adversaries due to the dependence of all other sector in combination with forward thinking critical infrastructures on it. A widespread power government planners. outage lasting weeks or months would have severe and staggeringly lethal consequences: imagine a This report presents a roadmap for those next pandemic-lockdown without telecommunications, steps. We aim to accelerate resilience investment water, food, refrigeration, or working fuel pumps. in the grid and foster the development of the advanced technologies necessary to meet an The risks are not theoretical. In the past decade evolving threat landscape, before it is too late. incidents have accelerated and attacks and Government and industry must travel this road probing have become increasingly sophisticated. together: national security is a public concern, We have witnessed a Russian cyberattack take but most of the power grid is owned and down the eastern Ukrainian power grid in the operated by the private sector. While federal dead of winter, a clandestine physical assault on power authorities can and should be directed a California substation threaten to cut power to provide early examples, most regulation is at to Silicon Valley, and a space weather event of state level jurisdiction, where reliability standards sufficient magnitude to permanently damage and mandates are rare. We therefore stress power grids at continental scales move straight the importance of public-private partnerships through Earth’s orbit, missing the planet by only a as the engines of progress throughout the week. As these threats have revealed themselves, report. The federal government must provide the nation’s best scientific and business minds the motivation, leadership, and resources for have dedicated considerable efforts toward a resilience transformation, while the power understanding vulnerabilities and improving the industry must ultimately direct it, alongside grid’s resilience, and, for some vulnerabilities, its ongoing transition to sustainability. Our substantial progress has been made in a short recommendations, explored in detail in Section (6) time. of the report, represent the bare minimum of what government and industry must undertake to meet But more needs to be done, and in record time. the challenges and circumstances of the next two Protecting the grid from the rapidly evolving decades. They are as follows: threats examined in this report requires a multi- pronged approach. First, the nature of the threat Recommendation 1: requires rapid response and development of new Congress should direct the Department of Energy technologies with a minimum of bureaucratic red (DOE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), tape. Second, the sheer scale of the transmission and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to and distribution systems and the widening attack establish a central clearinghouse and decisional surface of grid-connected devices requires diverse node for communicating full and accurate threat 1 information to bulk power system operators and facilitate dissemination information to the relevant electric utilities. executive branch and Congressional stakeholders. The clearinghouse should build upon and expand Recommendation 3: the capabilities of the industry-led Electricity Congress should direct the Department of Defense Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) and the and the Department of Energy to establish a North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s nationwide advanced resilience technology (ART) (NERC’s) Energy Information and Analysis Center test bed network of long-duration, blackout (E-ISAC) to provide: 1) Detailed and timely threat survivable microgrids on military bases and other intelligence sharing with appropriate industry critical federally-owned facilities that are pre- personnel; 2) Real time threat-information determined to be safely sited on stable lands free networks and action tools for control room from flooding, wildfires and other high impact operators; and 3) Expanded and continually- disasters for the foreseeable future. These should evolving red-team exercises to test defenses be devoted to both immediate defensive capabilities against evolving threats. The clearinghouse should and rapid development of advanced grid resilience also collaborate with the government to increase technologies. the number of security clearances available to electric utility industry personnel. ART test beds should take the form of public private partnerships, where industry can Recommendation 2: host technologies for testing and commercial Congress should establish a National Resilient Grid development at government facilities. Though Authority (NRGA)—an independent agency staffed managed by DOD and DOE at their respective by rotating appointments of the country’s most facilities, the ART network should be integrated highly qualified energy, cybersecurity, and