Can the U.S. electric grid remain resilient as the threat of cyber and physical attack rises? Pennsylvania PUC Chair Gladys Brown talks about state and federal efforts to safeguard the electric power system.
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The electricity industry has taken advantage of network communications technologies to deliver power more efficiently and reliably. But as information technology becomes interwoven into the electricity system, the industry has also become more vulnerable to cyber attack.  In recent years, hackers have gained access to utility customer information and to energy control systems, and may ultimately threaten to disrupt power delivery itself.

Gladys Brown, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and head of the Critical Infrastructure Committee at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), talks about cyber risk and electric grid resilience. She also looks at current efforts involving state and federal regulators, and agencies such as the Department of Homeland security, to ensure electricity supply as cyber risks proliferate.

Gladys Brown is Chairman of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.  She also leads the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioner’s Critical Infrastructure Committee, a forum where state utility commissioners examine grid security risks and best practices.

Related Content 

New FERC Rule Grows Clean Energy’s Role in Grid Resilience https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2018/02/21/new-ferc-rule-grows-clean-energys-role-grid-resilience

Distributed Energy’s Cyber Risk 
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/energy-policy-now/distributed-energy’s-cyber-risk

Energy Policy

Grid Resilience in the Cyber Age

As natural gas has grown in importance as a fuel for electricity generation, have gas pipelines become the electric grid’s Achilles heel? A cybersecurity expert discusses the risk posed by the grid’s growing dependence on gas.
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Natural Gas fuels a third of the nation’s electricity generation, and the strong economics of natural gas are likely to cause its use to widen its use in years to come. Yet the growing reliance on natural gas may increase the risk of electricity supply disruption should pipelines fail due to severe weather, or physical and cyber attacks.

States, federal government and electricity market operators are well aware of this vulnerability,  but differ in how immediate they view threats to gas networks to be, and whether they believe regulators should dictate preventive action.

Kleinman Center Senior Fellow and grid cybersecurity expert Bill Hederman talks about the growing dependence of the electric grid on natural gas, and the implications of gas pipeline vulnerability to the reliability and resilience of the electric grid.

Listen to the companion podcast episode on state and federal action to address cyber risk, Grid Resilience in the Cyber Age.

Bill Hederman is a Senior Fellow with the Kleinman Center and founder of the Office of Market Oversight and Investigations at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).


Related Content 
Grid Resilience in the Cyber Age:  https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/energy-policy-now/grid-resilience-cyber-age 

New FERC Rule Grows Clean Energy’s Role in Grid Resilience https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2018/02/21/new-ferc-rule-grows-clean-energys-role-grid-resilience

Distributed Energy’s Cyber Risk 
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/energy-policy-now/distributed-energy’s-cyber-risk

Energy Policy Now

Gas Pipelines: A Threat to Electric Grid Resilience?

Gas Piplines: A Threat to Electric Grid Resilience?

IPCC lead climate author Oliver Geden talks about how politicians view the IPCC’s 1.5 new degree report, and implications for climate action.
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On October 8th the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees. The report describes expected environmental, economic and social impacts brought by 1.5 degrees Celsius of climate warming, and the actions that need to be taken on a global scale to limit warming to that level.

The report’s timing is crucial, as it comes ahead of this December’s global climate meeting in Katowice, Poland, where nations that signed onto the Paris Climate Accord will establish the rules that will guide them in reaching their climate commitments. The IPCC’s report serves as a guide to how much countries might be able to limiting warming. Yet at the same time, the report highlights the unprecedented effort that would be required to hold to the 1.5 degree target.

Oliver Geden, a lead author of the IPCC’s next major report on climate change, discusses the implications of the IPCC report for policymakers and for the upcoming UN Climate Summit.

Oliver Geden is Head of the Europe Research Division at the German Institute for International Security Affairs in Berlin, which advises the German government and European Union on international policy issues. He is also a recent visiting scholar at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. Geden is a lead author the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report on climate, due in 2022.

Related Content
Climate Policy Won’t Work Without Considering Labor https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2018/09/17/climate-policy-wont-work-without-considering-labor 

Power Over the Twenty-First Century Electric Grid https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/policy-digests/power-over-twenty-first-century-electric-grid 

Comparative Pathways Interim Report https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/paper/comparative-pathways-interim-report

What Does IPCC 1.5 Degree Report Mean for Global Climate Action?

What IPCC 1.5 Degree Report Means for Global Climate Action

As Washington relaxes standards governing methane leaks, oil and gas industry leaders pledge to limit emissions. An economist and an environmental advocate examine the impact of methane leaks and the credibility of industry efforts to contain them.
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In September, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior pushed forward two separate regulations that will, in effect, hold oil and gas companies less accountable for methane gas emissions into the atmosphere. The new rules ease requirements that energy companies detect and repair methane leaks from wells and pipelines. The Interior rule, which has gone into effect, and the EPA rule, which is now open for 60-days of public comment, are part of a series of Trump administration efforts to undo methane regulations that the same agencies had written during the Obama administration.

The agencies acknowledge that the looser regulations will have a negative climate impact. Methane is a greenhouse gas that can be 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Yet the current administration maintains that the Obama-era rules would place undue economic burden on energy companies, while many energy companies say that they’re already acting to reduce emissions, and the stricter rules are duplicative.

Guests Catherine Hausman, assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, and Ben Ratner of the Environmental Defense Fund, discuss the economic and environmental costs of methane emissions, and how estimates of these costs tend to vary widely. Hausman and Ratner also discuss why methane emissions are so hard to detect, explore initiatives to both speed and lower the cost of containing leaks, and look at whether industry’s voluntary efforts to reduce emissions are enough.

Catherine Hausman is a visiting scholar at the Kleinman Center, and an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, where she focuses on environmental and energy economics.

Ben Ratner is a Senior Director at the Environmental Defense Fund, based in Washington DC, where he focuses on collaborating with businesses on cleaner energy.

Related Content
The Hubbub About Gas Storage Levels https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2018/10/15/hubbub-about-gas-storage-levels 

Fighting Climate Change and the Social Cost of Carbon
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/policy-digests/fighting-climate-change-and-social-cost-carbon

How a Deepening Natural Gas Market Affects Europe https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2018/09/06/how-deepening-natural-gas-market-affects-europe

Carbon Capture’s Clean Coal Ambition  
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/energy-policy-now/carbon-captures-clean-coal-ambition

The Battle Over Methane Leaks

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We Have Moved to a New Web Host

Energy Policy Now offers clear talk on the policy issues that define our relationship to energy and its impact on society and the environment. The series is produced by the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and hosted by energy journalist Andy Stone. Join Andy in conversation with leaders from industry, government, and academia as they shed light on today's pressing energy policy debates.