Welcome to Grid Brief! Here’s what we’re looking at today: a new report highlights the danger of cyberattacks on critical energy infrastructure, understanding NEPA’s energy delays, and Switzerland's plans to lift its nuclear energy ban.

Report: Cyberattacks on Infrastructure are the New Geopolitical Weapon

When policymakers, engineers, and advocates discuss grid challenges the conversation primarily focuses on demand and reliability. What’s often left out is cybersecurity. This is a mistake, warns a new report from KnowBe4.

The study calls cyberattacks on critical power, water, communications, and transportation infrastructure the new geopolitical weapon. Indeed, a report from the International Energy Agency found that the average number of global cyberattacks against utilities per week doubled between 2020 and 2022. In 2023, they doubled again.

Research from Forescout, meanwhile, found that between January 2023 and January 2024, the world’s critical infrastructure had been attacked more than 420 million times, a 30% increase from 2022. That’s 13 attacks per second.

While these attacks impacted over 160 countries, the United States was the primary target. KnowBe4 notes that attackers were predominantly linked to China, Iran, and Russia.

Notably, the U.S. power grid is especially vulnerable to cyberattacks and risk is increasing. Data from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation found that the number of points in the grid that are susceptible to an attack grew from 21,000 in 2022 to 24,000 in April of this year.

One real-world example of a cyberattack impacting critical energy infrastructure in the U.S. is the 2021 attack on Colonial Oil pipeline which supplies 45% of the gas, diesel, and jet fuel for the East Coast. A ransomware attack shut the pipeline down for 11 days which increased gas prices in the region, left 11,000 gas stations without gas, and caused four states to declare a State of Emergency.

Understanding NEPA’s Energy Hurdles

Reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has become a focal point for federal policymakers and for good reason. Signed into law in 1970 before the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and before many state laws, NEPA has become an impediment to all energy projects.

While environmental protection is important, the inefficiencies of NEPA delay (and sometimes prevent) critical infrastructure from getting built which has several economic and environmental consequences.

Analysis from The Breakthrough Institute highlights the delays and headaches that NEPA litigation creates. Key findings include:

• Between 2013 and 2022, circuit courts heard approximately 39 NEPA appeals cases per year, a 56% increase over the rate from 2001 to 2015.

• Agencies won about 80% of the 2013-2022 appeals cases, 11% more per year than from 2001 to 2004, 8% more than from 2001 to 2008, and 4% less than from 2009 to 2015. The rate at which agencies’ reviews are upheld is high, meaning these environmental reviews are seldom changed as a result of litigation.

• Energy projects were the second most common subject of litigation (29%). Litigation delayed fossil fuel and clean energy project implementation by 3.9 years on average, despite the fact that agencies won 71% of those challenges. NGOs filed 74% of energy cases, with just 10 organizations responsible for 48% of challenges.

Given the need to build out supply to meet growing demand, NEPA litigation and delays are especially damaging. Senators John Barrasso (R-WY) and Joe Manchin (I-WV) have introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 to address some of these NEPA-related issues.

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Conversation Starters

• Switzerland plans to allow the construction of new nuclear power (Bloomberg)

  The Swiss government is planning to lift its moratorium on new nuclear power plants which has been in place since 2018. The country has four operable reactors which generate 37% of its electricity supply.

• U.S. clean energy jobs grow at twice the rate of overall jobs (Reuters)

  A new report from the Department of Energy found that employment in clean energy businesses - including wind, solar, nuclear and battery storage - rose by 142,000 jobs, or 4.2% last year—up from 3.9% in 2022. The rate was above the overall U.S. job growth rate of 2% in 2023.

• Department of Interior revokes Trump-era decision of Alaska lands (E&E News)

  Earlier this week, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland released a record of decision that formally nixed five public land orders issued in the closing weeks of the Trump administration. These orders would have lifted a decades-old mining and drilling ban on 28 million acres in Alaska.

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