I’m glad that someone other than me is writing about this stuff. At RealClearEnergy Paul Feldman remarks:
That our electric grid is highly vulnerable is not news. Every U.S. President since 1990 has acknowledged that U.S. infrastructure risks are high, that the threats are real, and each has pledged to promptly address the looming potential risks. Recent reports from the National Academy of Science have highlighted the issue, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that in relation to the heightened risks now faced, “it is doubtful that the defense has improved at all. Attacks are still easy and cheap to launch and difficult and expensive to defend against.â€
The issue is so widely-acknowledged that the Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, now has an exhibit titled “Weapons of Mass Disruption†that features “some of today’s top experts on the new intelligence battlefield of cyberspace,†and allows visitors to “explore what would happen if a cyberattack hit the electrical grid.â€
Many entities are working to make grid improvements. But therein lies a key part of the challenge — the myriad of entities, interests, and polices involved requires coordination at the national level. Such oversight is vital to ensuring that critical grid improvements are made in a timely manner, that the end result is a more sophisticated, resilient grid that can integrate a diverse array of electric generation sources without increasing vulnerabilities, and that consumers alone do not bear the full financial burden in their electric rates. Strengthening and protecting the grid is a national security matter, so federal funding must be part of the financial equation.
If you’re determined to place the responsibility for the power grid firmly in the hands of the private sector, I have two words for you: strict liability. As it is the incentives all point the other way. What happens to the power companies if a neighborhood or a city loses power for a day, a month, or a year? Politicians will bloviate for a while but basically nothing.
I honestly don’t think there’s a practical alternative for making the power grid what it should be than making it a federal priority and we won’t know for sure until a problem actually takes place.
Decades go by and it still hasn’t penetrated the bubble surrounding our political class. I suppose it’s much easier to focus on tweets and birth certificates.
Hmmm… You’d think… It ought to be possible to wargame something like that. Get a batch of knowledgable people, make up a problem — “there’s an earthquake and the Jackonville Florida power company is totally wrecked. What happens next over all of Florida? And Georgia and the Carolinas?” Make a computer simulation, play with it, drop the results in front of the higher ups are FEMA.
Or are you going to tell me, “Of course we think about consequences when it’s something like a Russian armored brigade racing through the Rumanian border. That’s simple prudence. But God and the wisdom of the US Senate will never allow us to contemplate closing down nuclear power plants. The US Army will never imagine such a disaster?”
The problem is that improving the power grid won’t employ 20 million people who have high school-only educations and nobody will believe it would and convincing people that it’s for kids is a hard sell so it’s not attractive to politicians. It won’t cut costs or increase their bonuses so it’s not attractive to big company CEOs. Downside risk is hard to sell as a reason for doing things.
Yeah, It’ll probably go like Katrina and the New Orleans disaster, by the way, is the potential for the same any less there now?