EXCLUSIVE — Rep. August Pfluger called on the Biden administration to take steps to better protect the U.S. power grid from cyberattacks and from reserve capacity shortages, warning in a letter shared exclusively with the Washington Examiner that these vulnerabilities risk setting off a nationwide reliability crisis.
In a letter sent late Tuesday to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, the Texas Republican said the Department of Energy “lacks a clear plan to protect our critical infrastructure systems from nefarious actors, like Russia, and ensure peak power demand can be sufficiently met.”
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If the United States “does not develop a long-term, serious energy policy for the 21st century,” he wrote, “then America will soon face a reliability crisis that inflicts needless pain on American families, businesses, and workers.”
In an interview Wednesday, Pfluger said he is “very, very concerned about the administration’s energy policies writ large.”
He also urged the Department of Energy to prioritize energy security and reliability needs in the short term while also taking steps to deliver on the administration’s clean energy goals in the longer term.
“It is inevitable that intermittent renewables will play a role in our electric infrastructure; however, we must move forward with a central focus on affordability and reliability of the grid,” Pfluger wrote, noting that global electricity demand is expected to grow roughly 50% by 2050, according to the Energy Information Administration.
“We are in an energy expansion, not an energy transition,” he said, and America “must be able to meet our domestic needs while prioritizing the key principle of reliability.”
The letter comes after U.S. grid operators warned last month that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. would face a heightened risk of power outages this summer, citing threats posed by extreme weather conditions and a shortfall in generating capacity.
Grid operators also warned against the rise of state-sponsored cyberattacks, namely from Russia, which also imperil the grid. In April, DOE and U.S. intelligence agencies warned the energy sector officials about the discovery of malicious cybertools that they said were capable of gaining “full system access” to the systems that control electricity and natural gas in the U.S.
Private cybersecurity firms have since concluded Russia is likely responsible for developing the malware.
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Ultimately, Pfluger said, he wants to see a strategy from the White House “that talks about all these priorities in a mature way, an adult conversation way that provides for the security, the stability and the reliability of American use, but also leads in the world.”
The Department of Energy did not respond to a request for comment.
