Geoscience Policy Monthly Review
march 2018
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energy
Senate committee approves legislation to set broad science policy for DOE R&D programs
March 8, 2018
The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources approved the Department of Energy Research and Innovation Act (H.R.589/S.2503) by voice vote on March 8, 2018. This recent action comes over a year after the House passed H.R.589 and it was referred to the Senate committee for consideration in January 2017. The act, first introduced by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX-21) in the House, aims to provide the Department of Energy (DOE) with specific guidance on energy science research coordination and reforms to streamline national laboratory management. The act is comprised of four main legislative components or titles.
Title I, Laboratory Modernization and Technology Transfer, aims to transfer increasingly commercially viable energy technologies developed by DOE national laboratories to the private sector. Specifically, the section would facilitate public-private partnerships through the new Agreements for Commercializing Technology pilot program, which allows national laboratories to enter agreements with third parties at their discretion. It would also exempt higher education and non-profit institutions from DOE cost sharing requirements for two years, and would develop a new public database of all existing grants and cooperative agreements of unclassified DOE research projects to aid in the technology transfer.
Title II, DOE Research Coordination, amends part of the America COMPETES Act (P.L. 111-358) to protect proprietary information collected by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) from recipients of financial awards. The title directs the Department to identify key areas for collaboration across science and applied research programs, and develop a program to enhance the economic, environmental, and energy security of the United States by making awards available to associations for creating and operating “Energy Innovation Hubs.” It also aims to identify programs that would be run more efficiently by the sates or the private sector, and eliminate substandard performance and duplicative research programs at DOE.
Title III, DOE Office of Science Policy, provides statutory direction and priorities for programs at the Office of Science and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. This includes conducting research in basic energy, biological and environmental research, high-performance computing, subatomic particle physics, low-dose radiation exposure, and fusion energy research. Specifically, Title III authorizes DOE to carry out extensive artificial photosynthetic research as part of a new Solar Fuels Research Initiative, and chemical to electrical energy conversion research as part of a new Electrical Storage Research Initiative. It also directs DOE to build a research program for developing exascale super computing capabilities and to support research in high-performance computing and networking relevant to energy applications.
Title IV, Nuclear Energy Innovation and Capabilities, focuses on developing advanced nuclear technology research and development (R&D) activities at DOE, and, in particular, supports novel reactor concepts such as fast neutron source reactors. This title aims to facilitate cooperative research between the DOE national laboratories, the private sector, and universities by allowing privately funded reactor prototypes to be constructed and operated at DOE sites and implementing a timeline for DOE to complete construction of an open-access user facility.
The DOE Research and Innovation Act promotes a number of programs that the President’s fiscal year (FY) 19 budget proposal targeted for dramatic reductions, including the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and ARPA-E. However, at the ARPA-E Annual Summit on March 14, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry hailed ARPA-E innovation as “impressive” and “one of the reasons DOE is having a profound impact on American lives.” The following day, at the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water budget hearing, Secretary Perry indicated that he would follow “the will of the committee” with respect to appropriations.
Sources: GovTrack, Library of Congress, U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Washington Post
Congress discusses cybersecurity threats and energy infrastructure security
March 23, 2018
At a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on energy infrastructure cybersecurity and emergency response on March 14, Department of Energy (DOE) Under Secretary Mark Menezes explained to committee members the severity and pervasiveness of cybersecurity threats, “When you have your security clearance, you get briefed, and your world view changes.” This hearing is the third hearing in a series concerning DOE modernization efforts dating back to January 2018.
The committee discussed a series of bills introduced earlier this month – H.R. 5174, H.R. 5175, H.R. 5239, and H.R. 5240 – that attempt to harden the nation’s energy infrastructure and protect the electric grid and energy supply chain from cyberattacks. However, potential threats to the nation’s energy security and grid resiliency are more than just virtual. The committee also discussed potential emergency response improvements in the face of physical threats due to natural disasters, such as the aftermath from Hurricane Maria damaging the electric grid and leaving roughly 150,000 residents in Puerto Rico still waiting for power to come back after six months. Under Secretary Menezes stated that the DOE recently announced plans to establish the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) to mitigate both physical and virtual energy infrastructure threats. CESER would leverage the DOE’s national laboratories to conduct early-stage research and development (R&D) in order to develop the next generation of control systems to better detect, prevent, and recover from cyberattacks. Furthermore, CESER would coordinate with existing public-private energy partnerships, such as the Cybersecurity Risk Information Sharing Program (CRISP) and the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), to better lines of communication and information sharing between grid operators and the DOE, decreasing potential grid downtime and enhancing the grid resiliency.
During the hearing, Under Secretary Menezes repeatedly warned the committee of the pervasiveness of malicious cyberattacks on our energy infrastructure and their threat to national security. The Under Secretary’s warning became even more pertinent when, the next day, suspected Russian government-sponsored actors – whose actions have targeted U.S. government entities and multiple critical infrastructure sectors and are being monitored and analyzed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – hacked into a South Dakota-based energy company, multiple nuclear power plants, and power utilities networks to gather control system data, laying the groundwork for a physical disruption. Responding to a separate cybersecurity violation, the Department of Justice unveiled charges on March 23 against nine state-sponsored Iranian nationals who hacked into the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and other federal agencies sensitive to national security during a five-year campaign starting in 2013.
Sources: Department of Energy, Department of Justice, Foreign Policy, Library of Congress, House Energy and Commerce Committee, NPR, US Computer Emergency Readiness Team, Wired Magazine