Transcripts For CSPAN2 House Science Subcommittee Hearing On

And fibers of the security and National Threat concerns. This subcommittee hearing is an hour and 20 minutes. This hearing will come to order. Without objection the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time, welcome to todays hearing, the future of electricity delivery modernizing and securing our nations electricity grid. I want to thank our witnesses for joining us here today. This is such an important topic. Im a young guy as you can tell but ive read some history, what was like to build the electric grid a century ago. We couldnt of imagine the technologies we use to power our homes and businesses today. The real challenge was extending power itself in every form of our society and there was a challenge that those providing power make money in the cities in well Populated Areas with business and commercial opportunities, with electric the government made a basic deal, we would provide an a monopoly over providing power and a lot of these areas, firms would make a lot of money, utilities would end in exchange they would carry the product everywhere it needed to be and in the 21st century we have a similar dilemma, a similar deal to be made. To provide power in a way that is clean and efficient and allows us to stay economically competitive even as we become a society less dependent on carbon. Electricity demand has been flat, we electrified more segments in the society in order to accomplish these goals but to get there, we have to change the energy sector. We know that as we do that there will be more serious threats to the electric grid from cyberattacks and otherwise. We know the economics of this whole thing are changing as Natural Gas Resources of come online. It is good for constituents who are saving money but as this changes we have to invest to upgrade the system to integrate these new sources of energy and strike a balance between them in real time which is a big challenge with Battery Storage. It is a technological challenge when it comes to basic basic Infrastructure Investment and that is what we are here to talk about. I was alarmed to hear and many of you were about the first serious cyberattack back in march. It was reported in march. As far as we know, no customers lost power in that attack but it is a warning sign of the incredibly serious damage that could happen if we dont take action on this issue but i the time one happens, somebody loses power it will be too late so the choice facing all of us is whether we get the legislative machinery to work in a way that we can make a serious investment and try to protect folks from cyberattacks we all know will come. We know russia and china and other adversaries would love to have in their back pocket the ability to shutdown our smart grid and the decision facing us is whether we will allow that to happen and i speak for every member of this committee when i say we will not. Im looking forward to talking about these subjects. We have the draft, Grid Modernization Research and Government Act of 2019 which will allow us to set forward a wide array of research opportunities, grid modernization, resilience, emergency response, modeling which we know is so important to manage the new type of grid that we have and better integration over noble sources. Several members of the committee including mister cassidy and Mister Foster have introduced the subject and we will incorporate elements of those into these draft and continue working on making sure we do that and we are looking at the Grid Cybersecurity Research and Government Act of 2019 which updates a bill created by mister barra. This is across Agency Research and development program, that will harden and mitigate the electric grid from cyberattacks carried out in partnership with the department of Homeland Security, National Institute for standards and technology in the National Science foundation and education and workforce was one of the efforts of Cyber Security that is often underappreciated is the fact that it is also a workforce issue. We dont have enough people trained and working in cybersecurity as we need, there are hundreds of thousands more openings in the next few years many of which in my home area got great work done at Carnegie Mellon but also university of pittsburgh cyberlaw Institute Among Others training people up for this. That is what these programs, we are excited to talk about demand we recognize the ranking a member for an opening statement. Thank you for hosting this hearing. I will ask about the population of pittsburgh, the metro area is 1. 5 million. That is a lot of electricity. We appreciate you hosting this hearing. This afternoon we will hear from expert witnesses on the existing strengths and weaknesses of the nations electric grid and the impact potential attacks and incidents could have on grid reliability and National Security. Our Witnesses Today will also discuss advances in the research and develop and of new grid tools and technologies and hopefully provide insight, how the federal government can work alongside american industry to strengthen the energy sector. The reliability of americas power grid is one of the greatest economic strengths. I like to say the things that make America Great are the things that america makes. How do we do that . We have a strong Reliable Energy supply. That is how we do it. In my home state of texas, reliable and affordable population increasing by more than 1000 a day. I was asking, we literally get 30,000 people a month into texas. You forget what that does in a year. 1000 People Per Day and it is important, energies that drive the consumption of energy, texas is by far the nations largest producer and consumer of electricity and keeping the power grid reliable and secure is absolutely key to maintaining us Economic Growth but even in texas it is Common Knowledge that our electric grid faces significant and diverse threats to the reliability and resiliency of howard liberty. We cannot predict when a cyberattack will threaten what you referenced and we do not know when the next Natural Disaster might occur. In 2017 we were reminded of this fact by the impact of hurricane harvey, a devastating category 4 hurricane that hit the texas gulf coast and caused significant generator and transmission line outages for many on the texas gulf coast and interconnections. However, due to proper planning and management by the electric Reliability Council of texas the texas grid was able to recover quickly from this devastating storm. It is not a question of if but a question of when that same will face significant cyberthreat. The modernization of the National Electricity system must be our priority. According to the department of energy the us electric grid must be updated within the next decade to address challenges including aging Energy Infrastructure, changes in demand for energy. Emerging threats and fundamental shift in us Energy Supply portfolio as Energy Sources, like renewable and nuclear, increase. We can see these changes taking place in my home state where nuclear generation, the source of energy, and 90 of the time over the last three years and where we lead we also lead the nation in wind energy and we are number 5 in solar energy by the way. Is next Generation Energy technologies continue to come online and Cyber Security capabilities to continue to grow and evolve we must take our action to counter our grid vulnerability and provide necessary updates to this critical and necessary infrastructure. Thankfully doe funds broad Research Programs that support grid modernization and Security Technology through departmentwide collaboration like the Grid Modernization Initiative and the grid modernization gm lc. Doe also funds Robust Research and novel grid technologies and computational moderating through the office of electricity and cyberSecurity Technology for Energy Delivery systems through its office of cybersecurity, Energy Security and emergency response. We are grateful to have two witnesses representing these efforts this afternoon. The honorable karen evans, assistant secretary of caesar and mister sean casten 4 he, the choate cochair of grid modernization, welcome to all of you. Modernizing our grid will require these important programs along with cooperation from many federal agencies and industries. I hope our witnesses, i trust our witnesses to share their expertise, how congress can best support these collaborative efforts. I think the chairman again for holding this hearing and look forward to very productive, there i say electrifying discussions. I yield back. It wouldnt be the first time electricity was powered by a lot of hot air. Had to include that for the Ranking Members granddaughter. We welcome her and it is important to note the bipartisan nature of this discussion as it often did on the subject and big supporters of nuclear energy. And one thing that breaks through the headlines, and at this time, introduce our witnesses, the honorable kevin evans from the secretary of Cyber Security Energy Security and emergency response, caesar, at the Us Department of energy. Before leaving caesar, she was National Director of the us cyberchallenge, a publicprivate Program Designed to address the skills gap in the Cyber Security field, she also worked for the george w. Bush administration where she was an it official at the office of management and budget. Where he worked on securing our Energy Infrastructure among other topics. Ms. Kelly speaks backman is a ceo of the Energy Storage association. Kelly has been 20 is working in energy and Environmental Issues in the public ngl, and private sectors. Including united technologies, sun edison and alliance to save energy. She is a former commissioner of the Maryland Public Service commission where she served as chair of the board of directors of the regional Greenhouse Gas initiative, covice chair of the committee on Energy Resources and the environment at a member of the epri Energy Efficiency grid modernization public advisory group. And this Katherine Hamilton is a chip 38 north solutions a Public Policy consultancy specializing in clean energy and innovation and executive director of the advanced energy and management alliance. She ran the grade wise allies with policy director to the Energy Storage association and worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Katherine worked in Buildings Research and government relations, spent a decade at an investor owned utility design Electrical Systems for commercial and residential development. As our witnesses should know uhf five minutes for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be included in the record. When you have completed your spoken testimony we will begin with questions and each member will then have five minutes for questions. We will start with the testimony of ms. Evans. Chairman lamb, Ranking Member weber, and members of the subcommittee, it is an honor and a privilege to serve at the department in jesse assistant secretary for the office of cybersecurity, Energy Security and emergency response. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on behalf of the the department. One of the most Critical Missions at d. O. E. Is developing the science and technology to successfully counter the ever evolving, increasing threat of cyber and other attacks on our networks, david, facilities and infrastructure. D. O. E. Works closely with our federal agencies, state and local, tribal and territorial governments, industry and our National Laboratory partners to accomplish this mission. Another Critical Mission for d. O. E. Is ensuring the resilience of our electric grid and successfully countering the ever evolving increasing threat of physical and cyber attacks. D. O. E. Recently announced an 8 Million Investment in innovations that will enhance the reliability and the resiliency of our nations Energy Infrastructure. This R D Partnership opportunity will further development of the next generation of tools and technologies that will become widely adopted throughout the energy sector. As we protect our infrastructure from Cyber Threats we are also working to improve and complete the resilience of our electricity systems. Our office of electricity also supports Transmission System resilience and generation diversity, and is exploring new architecture approaches for the electric grid. This includes the department of the north American Energy resilience model that aims to provide unique and groundbreaking National Scale Energy Planning and realtime Situational Awareness capabilities to enhance security and resilience. A large component of the ariz work is pursuing cutting edge innovation and big data, Artificial Intelligence and grid scale Energy Storage based on new technology. Grid scale storage will be an important enabler for renewable integration and four clean based load power. While todays technology are already providing value to the grid, the our physical limitations to the traditional batteries that will be surpassed by the next generation technologies. Efforts in grid scale Energy Storage are already producing important advancements. Grid scale Energy Storage technologies have been demonstrated using new generation of advanced flow batteries which rely on lowercost electrolytes. We are continuing to advance energy stored still are advanced Energy Storage initiative which includes the development of the new grid storage launchpad, aimed at accelerating materials development, testing and independent evaluation of Battery Technologies for grid applications. In addition to the r d at the d. O. E. National Laboratory Support the development of technologies that strengthen and improve Energy Infrastructure so that consumers have access to reliable and secure sources of energy. Another program driving enabling technologies d. O. E. s Grid Modernization Initiative gmi, which focuses on the integration of increasing the amount of variable generation into the grid through R D Investments at our National Labs. One noteworthy gmi effort will accelerate the conversion of the National Wind Technology Center campus into an experimental microgrid capable of testing Grid Integration at megawatt scale. These are just a few of the examples of how the United States is approaching its commitment to updating and proving its Energy Infrastructure and environmental responsibility within its own border but decent issues are also at the heart of so many of our partnerships and work abroad. With light and recite Energy Infrastructure is critical to the u. S. Economy