Grid fragility. Deep societal divisions. Climate change.

“We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”

— John W. Gardner, former United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare

One of the hallmarks of a successful, peaceful society is that personal concerns almost always outweigh worries about the world around us. So it is a measure of the scale of today’s challenges that, increasingly, that is no longer the case. 3 brewing catastrophes-in-waiting have nearly everyone on edge: Extreme weather, deep societal divisions, and increasing power grid fragility.

1) The power grid is changing fast – so fast that power companies have begun sounding the alarm as fossil fuel plants are shuttered and renewable generation picks up, increasing the grid’s fragility. “The US power grid is failing,” trumpets an article in the Wall Street Journal.[1]

At the same time, the grid is facing unprecedented challenges, making this a particularly dangerous time for its growing fragility. From extreme weather events to risks of terror or nation-state infrastructure attacks, concerns for grid security are at an all-time high. Should we slow the transition to renewables? Change course? Is this a technical issue? A policy gap?

2) Divisive politics. When I was growing up, getting involved in a political party was seen as democracy in action – a wholesome, positive sign for the future. These days parents worry that their children are being radicalized, a disease that brings communication to a painful halt. Most of us know colleagues, friends, even couples who’ve stopped speaking to each other.

What can we do to find common cause? Is there a path that can bring us to work together?

3) Extreme weather? We’ve all become British. We all complain about the weather, all the time. With cause.

The government of Indonesia is considering moving their Capitol (!) to a different island due to frequent, severe flooding. There is little question that weather patterns have become more extreme, with 100-year storms happening nearly annually, rainfall patterns changing and heat indexes climbing. Regardless of the cause, not happy news. When it’s not upending people’s lives, it’s adding stress to the grid, adding stress to us earthlings, and not helping with the deepening societal rifts that divide us. 

Yet warnings are growing fast that one of the most important measures nations have taken to reduce fossil fuel use – the grid’s transition to renewable generation – is pushing grid reliability toward disaster. What is the answer?

⌈ “We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised insoluble problems.” – John W. Gardner

If John W. Gardner is right, then perhaps, if we try, we can penetrate the excellent disguise these three, conjoined catastrophes-in-waiting are wearing.

From catastrophe to opportunity: Changing course

The first of these three crises, expanding grid fragility, may be the most serious, immediate concern: our lives and our wellbeing depend on electricity. And while consumers and the regulators who represent them may not always understand the risks, grid operators have a growing library of nightmare scenarios which, unfortunately, are becoming more serious (and likely) as the grid’s fragility increases.

What can be done?

There’s really no mystery on what’s needed. One good example: the Electric Infrastructure Security Council is about to publish a rather remarkable, comprehensive plan for grid resilience. After two years in research and production, the EPRO Handbook V: Blackstart Restoration for a Greener Grid is a refreshingly honest, peer-reviewed, comprehensive look at where today’s grid transition is heading, what is at risk, and what can be done to correct course.

The Handbook is heavy with solid tech recommendations from grid experts and security suggestions from national security advisers. But as a practical, action-oriented handbook, its most important contribution may be its gutsy, out-of-the-box policy suggestions.

Why is policy the key to changing course?

“Admiring the problem” is an ever-popular pastime. But frankly, wringing our hands over the scale of a problem, and articulating vague hopes for magical solutions, is a waste of time.

Doing the research to understand the problem? Yes.

Developing specific solutions that could fix it? Sure.

Better than magic, but only relevant if the solutions are funded and implemented. Yet funding and implementing resilience will only happen if it becomes accepted regulatory policy. And among some utility commissions, the priority of resilience to extreme hazards could be characterized as a “race to the bottom.” Minimum cost to rate payers is often the only real consideration, with disaster protection only considered for those historic hazards proven frequent and costly.

Is “hoping for the best” sound policy?

We all get a vote, and I humbly suggest: vote “no.”

Planning our resilience investments by watching the rear-view mirror works fine – until it doesn’t. And at a time of increasing grid stress and fragility in our increasingly unstable world, we need to reexamine our priorities, update our regulatory policy, and commit to resilience investments that can secure our future against extreme threats that haven’t happened yet. Threats we hope will never happen, while we commit to the policy changes and minimal investment it will take to ensure our survival if hope fails.

Penetrating the “brilliant disguise:”

How can we turn three insoluble problems into one great opportunity?

Grid fragility. Deep societal divisions. Climate Change. Three insoluble problems. What is the opportunity? I think the answer becomes clear if we rephrase these three conjoined, seemingly insoluble problems.

Try this:

The grid is at risk, the energy transition we’ve undertaken to address climate change is accelerating that risk, and the representatives our society uses to manage our grid – policy makers and regulators – are diligently watching the rear-view mirror. Put this way, the opportunity starts becoming clear.

Changing course to make the grid robust and secure requires a serious resilience policy reboot. If we do that right, it will mean laying the foundation for a carefully planned, resilience-enabled rebalancing of our generation resources. And it will mean increasing the share of renewables, but doing so with the constraints and changes that can enable them to support, rather than degrade, grid reliability and readiness for extreme events.

To achieve that we’ll need to recognize that our children’s future, our future, depends in a very real, highly specific way on making the effort to find common cause – to start listening to each other.

We need to respect each other, pay attention to experts, and break out of the mold of “hoping for the best” and pocketing the tiny savings that come from ignoring the risks ahead, and failing to invest in the critical grid resilience efforts that could fix the problem.

That, my friends, is the great opportunity. And, frankly, the only opportunity. We have limited time to get this right, but if we pay attention, it’s in our hands to change course and address all three of the catastrophes-in-waiting.

So the research has been done, we know what to do, and we know how to do it. It’s time to move on, to make common cause across all elements of society, and support policies that will drive and incentivize those solutions while laying a secure course to a more renewable-rich future.

To make this real and actionable, EIS Council and its partners are already taking a first step.

Working with leading universities, government agencies, corporations and technology experts, EIS Council is hosting the Human Continuity Project, an ambitious, whole-of-world resilience initiative designed to begin laying out national, regional and global resilience plans for extreme hazards. Applying the same system analysis and planning that underpin all modern tech development, the initiative emerged from research and planning that brought together utilities, government advisers and subject matter experts from around the world. 

Building on this base, over the last 15 years the Council has taken preliminary steps to help prepare for this Project, including researching essential policy changes, and investing in a head start on some of the most critical tools and capabilities utilities will need to have in place when grid catastrophe-in-waiting becomes a very real nightmare.

A range of corporations, government agencies, universities and subject matter experts have already joined together, planning to work together in a broad, whole-of-world, multi-sector collaboration on this initative. The plan now is to expand this team – to invite, in different capacities, all those who would like to help.

If you, your company, your community or your organization would like to join this effort, please get in touch. Write the people at EIS Council at info@eiscouncil.org.

To learn more about the Human Continuity Project, visit our HCP website here.

If we work together, we can change course, and secure our common future.

 

[1] https://www.wsj.com/video/series/wsj-explains/the-us-power-grid-is-failing-here-are-three-ways-to-fix-it/DEF647B7-5568-41E7-93F2-39A2C224E8EF

 

By: Avi Schnurr