As natural gas has grown in importance as a fuel for electricity generation, have gas pipelines become the electric grid’s Achilles heel? A cybersecurity expert discusses the risk posed by the grid’s growing dependence on gas.
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Natural Gas fuels a third of the nation’s electricity generation, and the strong economics of natural gas are likely to cause its use to widen its use in years to come. Yet the growing reliance on natural gas may increase the risk of electricity supply disruption should pipelines fail due to severe weather, or physical and cyber attacks.

States, federal government and electricity market operators are well aware of this vulnerability, but differ in how immediate they view threats to gas networks to be, and whether they believe regulators should dictate preventive action.

Kleinman Center Senior Fellow and grid cybersecurity expert Bill Hederman talks about the growing dependence of the electric grid on natural gas, and the implications of gas pipeline vulnerability to the reliability and resilience of the electric grid.

Listen to the companion podcast episode on state and federal action to address cyber risk, Grid Resilience in the Cyber Age.

Bill Hederman is a Senior Fellow with the Kleinman Center and founder of the Office of Market Oversight and Investigations at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).


Related Content
Grid Resilience in the Cyber Age: https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/energy-policy-now/grid-resilience-cyber-age

New FERC Rule Grows Clean Energy’s Role in Grid Resilience https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/blog/2018/02/21/new-ferc-rule-grows-clean-energys-role-grid-resilience

Distributed Energy’s Cyber Risk
https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/energy-policy-now/distributed-energy’s-cyber-risk