Full Title: States’ Role in Addressing Foreign Threats in U.S. Critical Energy Infrastructure Sectors
Author(s): Carl Amritt, Dan Lauf, Michelle Woods
Publisher(s): National Governors Association
Publication Date: February 28, 2022
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The safety and economic security of the United States are dependent on the integrity of the nation’s critical energy infrastructure systems, including power, natural gas, and petroleum. Failure of critical assets in any of these systems could have catastrophic impacts on communities, businesses and national defense. Energy is also the backbone of all other critical infrastructure systems, meaning that an energy supply failure could have cascading effects on transportation, water, telecommunications, finance, healthcare and other sectors.
While all energy infrastructure is important, critical energy infrastructure can be defined as physical or virtual energy systems and assets so vital that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on national security, economic security, public health or safety, or any combination of those matters. To deter, detect, and defend these entities requires the cooperation of state government along with federal interagency partners and energy sector entities. Governors are uniquely positioned to convene these stakeholders and implement policies that address these threats. This issue brief will examine the vulnerabilities of critical energy infrastructure sectors and assets to foreign threats and identify possible Gubernatorial actions to address those vulnerabilities.