FERC And EEI Criticism Of WSJ For Recent Article On Terrorism And Power Grid Misses The Point
Peter Kelly-Detwiler, Contributor | Forbes
3/18/2014 @ 11:01AM |1,943 views
On March 12, The Wall Street Journal’s energy reporter Rebecca Smith wrote an article highlighting the risk to the U.S. power grid if only nine of the country’s 55,000 electric substations were to be knocked out by terrorists during a hot summer. Smith noted that, “The study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission concluded that coordinated attacks in each of the nation’s three separate electric systems could cause the entire power network to collapse, people familiar with the research said.”
FERC apparently began looking at this issue only recently in response to requests from Senator Dianne Feinstein and others after last year’s April attack on a sub-station in San Diego.
Image: Wall Street Journal
Now regulators and others, including the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) are criticizing Smith and the WSJ for making this vulnerability public. Thomas Kuhn of the EEI recently stated,
“[W]e encourage [FERC], Congress and the administration to investigate the disclosure of this sensitive information to The Wall Street Journal to ensure that we all continue to have a strong partnership going forward,”
FERC Acting Chairwoman Cheryl LaFleur also weighed in, charging that,
The Wall Street Journal has appropriately declined to identify by name particularly critical substations throughout the country. Nonetheless, the publication of other sensitive information is highly irresponsible. While there may be value in a general discussion of the steps we take to keep the grid safe, the publication of sensitive material about the grid crosses the line from transparency to irresponsibility, and gives those who would do us harm a roadmap to achieve malicious designs. The American people deserve better.
Really? It was Smith and the WSJ who brought focused attention to the San Diego attack (though it was actually first brought to light in December of last year by Foreign Policy). It has been Smith who has been pushing for a better approach to the issue, observing in her most recent piece that,
No federal rules require utilities to protect vital substations except those at nuclear power plants. Regulators recently said they would consider imposing security standards.
The sad fact is that this whole issue is not new. Officials have known about this issue for some time. In November of 2012, the National Academy of Sciences finally released a study entitled Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System, a report prepared at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, and kept under wraps since 2007 for security reasons. The NAS pushed for publication, noting that the 2011 blackout in the US Southwest, and the huge power failure in India “underscore the need for the measures discussed in this report. “ The report also cited the potential for “turmoil, widespread public fear, and a sense of helplessness” as well as significant potential for loss of life.
So if this report has actually been out since 2007, and made public a year and a half ago, it raises the questions: “Where has everybody been? And why did it take the attack on the San Diego substation, and Rebecca Smith’s subsequent WSJ article to focus any meaningful attention on this issue?”
It seems to me, society owes Smith a debt of gratitude for waking us up. But being awake and addressing the problem are two different things. What we really need now is concerted action, and it should include at least the following:
1) a highlighting of the most significant vulnerabilities (which it appears the FERC report has done)
2) a plan for hardening of major infrastructural assets
3) a plan to stockpile crucial parts, and contingency plans for what to do and how to mobilize resources if an event does occur
4) and perhaps most importantly, a plan for resiliency
Resiliency means what do we do if something does occur. Hurricane Sandy showed us how vulnerable we are even to an event we saw happening days in advance. An attack on the grid would presumably be swift and coordinated, and probably unpreventable at some level. We do not live in a police state and there is no way to harden the entire grid.
So in that case, we need to think about how to ensure reliable and decentralized power to military bases (there is already a lot of work going on there, some with renewables – where no fuel is needed and storage or back-up generation), so there is a National Guard to call out that actually has deployment and communications capability. But one would also want to strengthen critical infrastructure – police stations, hospitals, cell phone towers, even gas stations. That’s where micro-grids can come in handy, since they are self-sustaining miniature grids that can ‘island’ from the main power grid.
Nobody is suggesting we walk around with 24 x 7 paranoia. But the vulnerability here is so obvious, we need to address it in a coordinated fashion. We should learn from the National Academy of Sciences report. And we should also learn from report of the The 9/11 Commission which cited “deep institutional failings” and stated “We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.” It also noted ”We do not believe our leaders understood the gravity of the threat.”
EEI’s Kuhn and FERC’s Cheryl LaFleur can be upset with the WSJ and Rebeccca Smith all they want, or press to find out how she obtained her information. I’d rather see our leaders focusing intently on addressing these issues that have all but gone ignored for too long. There’s a lot more work here that needs to be done, more resources need to be focused on the issue, and we’ve wasted seven years since the initial NSA report came out. We clearly do not yet have the imagination, policy, capabilities, and management to comprehensively and adequately address this issue. Forget where the WSJ got its information. It’s time to get moving.
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