# Presentation: 453365

## FERC’s Initiativeson Energy Infrastructure

- Alison Silverstein
- Federal Energy Regulatory Comm’n
- EEI-AGA Board Member Seminar
- September 25, 2003

## Overview

- Short-term initiatives
- Cost recovery policy and cases
- Critical energy infrastructure information
- Dam safety
- Natural gas deliverability
- Cyber-security
- Supporting industry and other efforts
- Long-term concerns

## Security cost recovery

- Policy – spend what you need to protect assets and we’ll review and approve prudent expenses
- Issued September 14, 2001
- 3 requests approved, more filings coming

## Critical energy infrastructure information

- Goal to protect information asset-owners must submit from widespread public dissemination, without harming public’s right to learn information to participate in siting proceedings
- Keeps locational information and key engineering detail off the web and out of public reading rooms; review of each requester and purpose of request
- Rule adopted February, 2003
- _[http://www.ferc.gov/home/RM02-4-02-21-03.pdf](http://www.ferc.gov/home/RM02-4-02-21-03.pdf)_

## Dam safety program

- Formed FERC hydro security team
- Security program for hydropower projects - guidance for licensees
- Initial assessments and security enhancement guidance for specific dams; ongoing inspections
- Integration of security concerns with emergency action plans and procedures
- Rapid alert notification method for information dissemination
- Consultation (w/ industry and government agencies) and training (FERC staff and industry)

## Natural gas supplies

- Working with industry to determine ability to assure gas delivery in the event of pipeline disruptions
- Emergency reconstruction
- Assessing deliverability relative to needs
- Emergency gas reallocation
- Regional table-top disaster exercises coming up
- Using non-public technical conferences to resolve security issues in specific cases

## Cyber-security

- FERC asked industry, through NERC, to develop cyber-security standards to address bulk power grid cyber inter-dependencies
- These are generic and least common denominator, not “best practices”
- Since cyber systems and challenges are consistent across industries, same standards could be used for natural gas, oil pipelines, water and wastewater utilities

## Supporting industry and other security efforts

- Electric -- NERC CIPAG
- Natural gas -- AGA, INGAA initiatives
- Other federal agencies -- cooperating with Department of Energy, Office of Pipeline Safety, Department of Homeland Security, Rural Utility Service, ...
- Talking to state regulators
- Thinking about what a secure energy system of the future would look like....

## Longer-term security initiatives

- Facilitating expansion of physical energy infrastructure
- Using locational pricing of energy to encourage better siting, balancing between energy users and transmission, generation and fuel sources
- Facilitating use of distributed energy resources – energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation
- Rethinking energy system architecture, materials and assumptions

## Security considerations

- It’s not just terrorism we have to protect against
- What if the energy system is used as the weapon instead of the target?
- The energy system should include not just the energy producing and delivery components, but also the energy users
- Beware the inter-dependencies....
- Measures that improve security and reliability often have multiple benefits

## We can’t protect the whole energy system, so we need:

- Better detection of attack or system failure
- More graceful, less disastrous system failure
- Easier, faster system repair (e.g., more interchangeability between key parts)
- Lower consequences to energy system failure
- More efficiency, renewables, distributed generation
- More robust, redundant, dispersed energy sources
- Smarter grid controls, more islanding
- Make the digital economy more fault-tolerant

## Energy security challenges

- Paying for new infrastructure and security investments
- Paying for new research and development
- Cyber-security and SCADA
- Protecting information
- Voluntary versus mandatory or regulated security measures
- Lack of leadership
- Difficult to prioritize challenges, needs