By Michael Curley
A U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan comes under heavy fire from the Taliban. As the Company Commander and his men hunker down, he reaches for his 2-way radio to call for back-up. When he touches the on-button, nothing happens. His radio has been hacked.
At a local electric utility in Ohio, the controller gets a routine notice that power from outside generators will be cut back in 10 minutes. No problem. This happens every day at this time. Power companies share the responsibility of generating electricity on the grid. So, according to company policy, the controller activates a generator within his own system. As he pushes the control switches, nothing happens. The utility has been hacked. Minutes later a blackout occurs. The community is in total darkness. No heat. No lights. No Internet. Uncle Joe’s dialysis machine shuts off. Aunt Jane’s respirator stops.
Think this is fiction? Think again. In 2015, a hacker group the authorities call “Sandworm” caused a blackout in Ukraine that left more than 250,000 people in darkness for 6 hours. In Afghanistan, the hacker is the Taliban. But when the electric power goes out in Ohio, who’s the hacker? Foreign powers, criminals, pranksters?
Almost two centuries ago, the Earth, itself, was hacked. On September 1st 1859, a wave of gas – or what scientists call a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) from a solar storm – shot off the Sun’s surface and hit the earth. All of the electrical circuits in the world went down.
Destructive CMEs aren’t common, but they do happen. According to NASA, “on March 13, 1989 the entire Province of Quebec, Canada, suffered an electric power blackout…. caused by a solar storm.” NASA says that the because of that solar storm, the “northern lights” could be seen as far south at Florida and Cuba.
This isn’t fiction. It’s not just our military adversaries that we have to worry about. So, how do we protect ourselves? How do we protect our power?
Fortunately, there is electronic equipment that can protect power systems from hacking and from CMEs too. The military can, and does, install and deploy this equipment to protect our soldiers, sailors, and airmen.
Places like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles – all of the big population centers that are served by major electric utilities - can protect their systems too. They have literally millions of customers on whom they can lay off the cost. But what about our system in Ohio? Maybe a few thousand customers. Far too few to lay off the major cost of grid protection. How are they and the hundreds of other small electric power systems going to pay? How – since we are all part of the same grid and therefore interdependent – are WE going to pay for grid protection for all?
There is an answer, and it’s a relatively simple one.
Take a look at your phone bill. At the end of the bill, in the “fine print” where all the taxes and fees are hidden, you will find a small entry. It is called the “Universal Service Fund Charge.” It is a charge authorized by Congress in 1997 that your phone company collects from you and pays into the Universal Service Fund (USF), managed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The Fund was created to promote universal access to telecommunications services and later expanded to include broadband services. According to Verizon: “This fund supports telecommunications and information services in schools, public libraries, and rural health-care facilities. The fund also subsidizes local service to high-cost areas and low-income customers.”
The fact that few people even know about the USF Charge, or, much less, have never objected to it, is testimony to its effectiveness as a fund raising strategy.
The success of the USF Charge is due to three factors. It is very broad-based. It is small. And, it is painless.
What we need to protect our electric power grid is a small, painless fee much like the USF Charge. But instead of the charge showing up on your phone bill, it would show up on your electricity bill.
How could this happen? Would Congress and the President need to authorize such a fee or charge? Most certainly, yes. But, since it is so similar to the USF Charge, they could simply amend the USF legislation, or they could pass an entirely new Act.
Among utility executives and political leaders across the country, there is a growing recognition that the nation’s power grid must be protected. As they mobilize the legal and administrative resources to do so, they must also create an effective finance mechanism to pay for it - something the country desperately needs.
Michael Curley is a lawyer and a Visiting Scholar at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, D.C. He writes books about environmental & energy law and finance and has taught at the Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and the Vermont Law School.
No comments:
Post a Comment