Energy systems vulnerabilities today, tomorrow

The physical infrastructure of our energy systems is insecure from small-scale attacks, such as the substation shootings in North Carolina and Washington in 2022, to large-scale military actions, such as Russia’s offensive on Ukraine’s energy grid. Yet these concerns are only a piece of the systems’ larger vulnerability risks. Our three experts, Clark Miller, Amanda Ormond and Jennifer Richter, sort through current and future hazards for energy systems and the impact on people who use and need those systems.

Amanda Ormond is a professor of practice and the co-director of the Just Energy Transition Center with LightWorks® at the Global Futures Laboratory. Ormond has more than 30 years of experience in policy work in energy and clean energy development.

Clark Miller is a professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and director of the Center for Energy & Society. His work examines the design choices in front of us as we choose which clean energy futures to build.

Jennifer Richter is an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. She researches and teaches energy policy and environmental justice, placing her at the intersection of energy justice.

Jennifer Richter: It’s important to examine why these vulnerabilities seem to be suddenly emerging. I’m a professor working with mostly 18- to 25-year-olds, and when I teach energy justice, the students have no idea how our energy system works. They can’t envision that system. I think one of the major vulnerabilities of our energy system is that it’s still portrayed as a system of technologies outside the reach of people. Yes, there’s material power, but people don’t quite understand the political power that goes into shaping the materiality of our energy systems. Attacks on energy systems demonstrate that political vulnerability, which someone like Vladimir Putin intimately recognizes. He understands that the age of his kind of fossil fuel-generated power is coming to the beginning of the end, so he’s exerting that power as quickly as possible in the most outwardly dramatic way.

My concern is the breathtaking cynicism and cruelty that goes into disrupting an energy grid. I think of the schools, hospitals, and facilities that keep our lives going and keep us safe; to attack those is a way of not recognizing the people that are embedded within those systems, much as Russia is doing to Ukraine. It is the refusal to acknowledge the humanity that is embedded within these political systems. We’ve done ourselves a grave disservice over the past 50-70 years by not recognizing all of the human labor that’s involved in keeping our energy systems going. And to make them safer would be to recognize and really celebrate that kind of labor. I think of all the Ukrainian public service announcements that celebrate the people who, even in a war zone, go to the energy substation every day to keep it going. As I consider vulnerabilities, I consider all of the different webs, whether it is privileging the political power embedded in these systems or refusing to understand the power embedded in these systems. Both can drive the intentional destabilization of energy infrastructures.

It’s important to think of fear as a privilege, too. To be scared of an unstable future implies that you had a stable past that you were able to depend on. So, if fear is a privilege, how do we go from it being a weakness into a strength, a concern instead of fear, of trying to not plan for a stable future but to plan for an inherently uncertain and constantly changing future? We just have to stop thinking that we can promise that stability to future generations doing the same things over again.

Amanda Ormond: We have an electric system that’s been built over the past 100 years and as we bring on new technologies, as we have climate challenges, we’re trying to fit round pegs into square holes and modify the electric system the largest machine on Earth. We’re trying to modify this very embedded system both from a technology and infrastructure standpoint, but also from the human, political, regulatory, and institutional business side. We have these very embedded old systems that now we’re trying to change rapidly. Yes, we are seeing vulnerabilities. For example, in my career, communications technology has gotten so cheap that everything now has two-way communications, which opens up many different avenues for attacks. The same thing happens with distributed generation. Utilities have been reluctant to connect small solar systems because they see those as pathways into their system. We’re trying to change the system to be something much different than what it was, at a pace that utilities have never seen. And they’re very uncomfortable about that. It’s changing the way we do energy.

Clark Miller: We need to be clear about the variety of changes that are happening in the electricity system. One of those is the addition of renewables to the grid, because renewable power plants don’t operate the same way as big, thermal, fossil fuel-generated power plants. Additionally, we’ve introduced markets into our electricity grids in the last 30 years, especially in places like California and Texas. Those are some of the places where we are seeing utility grids go down more frequently than they have in the past. We should also recognize the changing environmental context within which electricity systems operate. We’ve had cold snaps in Texas; wildfires and atmospheric rivers in California. In Arizona, we’ve had water shortages in the Colorado River, where we get small but important parts of our electricity supply from hydro generators, which historically have shored up our electricity grid and are now more restricted because there is less water. Those climate changes are changing the physical context within which the grid is operating.

We are also putting more and more of our economy on the back of the electricity grid. As we add electric vehicles and electrify industries as part of decarbonization, we expect more from our electricity grid; our relationship to it is changing. There’s a lot happening in our electricity system: new technologies, new business models and new ways of operating. In the southwest, we’re rapidly growing our economy it is great for the economy, but it means that we need more electricity. And again, we’re having to act more rapidly at a time when people are increasingly concerned about where we’re getting our power from and where we’re siting our power plants. It is a paradigm shift in the electricity sector.

Attacks on the electricity grid are compounding these existing vulnerabilities, which is why these attacks are getting more attention. I’d add that the security of energy supplies from a military perspective has been an issue for over 200 years, and probably even longer. Historically, we’ve seen attacks on energy security as part of geopolitical considerations for a very long time. It is not a surprise when you get into questions of large-scale military conflict that energy resources and supplies are very much a part of the calculation of combatants to disrupt modern, high-tech economies.

Ormond: The “electrify everything” goal creates its own vulnerabilities because of the scale and scope of change, and the pressure we’re going to put on the electric system to be reliable. If you don’t have electricity, you can’t pump gasoline for your gasoline car. But, as we move forward with electrification, if you don’t have electricity, and your car runs on electricity, and your house runs on electricity, and your power plant runs on electricity, there are much bigger vulnerabilities coming. One of the things that keeps me up at night is that we honestly don’t know what is coming with weather variability and extremes. With some of these big heat storms, I think we are just getting a thumbnail of what is possible, and we’re not prepared. In our electric system, we have variable weather at the same time as we are trying to build the system with variable resources weather — dependent variable resources.

Let me just bridge to the equity question, which is a whole new lens to think about energy. We built very big, very polluting power plants. Where did we build them? Far from where people lived on purpose because they’re big and polluting. But the populations living near those plants have grown. We have also been redlining, putting industrialized facilities where poorer people live. I hope the next generation will not tolerate that. But there are complications — we have industrialized complexes, where there are pipelines and electrical systems. Where do we put these things now? And the question about equity in renewable energy development is going to be an interesting one. For me, the expectation is that we don’t do what we did in the past; that we do consider people’s livelihoods and the impacts on societies when we build in the future. This has to be done in conjunction with variable power generation, weather changes, and concurrent with change at a pace and scale not seen before by the energy sector.

Richter: As we have this discussion, I am thinking about all the missing conversations that need to be had. Something people talk about all the time is cryptocurrency as a form of economic justice, but I look at how much energy it takes to mine cryptocurrency now we’re exacerbating energy justice issues. Bringing those conversations together, all the time, requires massive planning. It’s interesting how technocratic the energy planning in the United States was for such a long time. Now we are acknowledging the shift in values from affordability, stability, security all of which are wonderful values that undergirded the creation of our energy system but left out many communities who were seen as less important to economic development. Now we see the generational shift to values of equity, sustainability and resiliency because younger generations know they will not grow up in the same circumstances as we grew up. They cannot rely on affordability and stability as the only markers for a successful energy system. We’re bringing together these quickly shifting values in a quickly shifting landscape, while also attending to the obduracy of these existing energy infrastructures. A massive amount of planning and conversations need to happen across sectors that have traditionally been isolated and don’t want to talk to each other and don’t use the same vocabulary. At the same time, we are trying to decentralize the energy system, which requires even larger conversations across more stakeholders. How do we scaffold these conversations, amongst all these different stakeholders, and then act upon those wishes against a pretty opaque energy system?

Ormond: One of the things I think about is how to build a resilient electric system in a future where there are more vulnerabilities, including climate vulnerabilities. We have had a reliable system, both gas and electric, for decades. Now, we have more instances where we face weather events that are going to cause more vulnerabilities; having a near 100% reliable electric system may become cost prohibitive. What are we willing to accept and pay for? The policymakers and people that design the electric system do not want to have any kind of outages, but I believe we’re going to have more outages. We need to have a political conversation about what is acceptable, and what do we do when we have outages because the finger pointing doesn’t help.

Miller: That conversation must happen. And it’s one of the things that we’ve really been missing locally. In the 1910s and 1920s, when we were building the electricity system, conversations about key issues, such as whether cities wanted public power or private power, were debated broadly. It was a national conversation and also a local conversation. When Samuel Insull built Chicago Edison, he gave talks and held listening sessions with community groups all over the city because he was asking for a very new kind of business arrangement. We have lost that way of really taking conversations about the future of energy out into all of the communities that are involved.

Locally, with rising urban heat, there’s no question in my mind that the future of air conditioning in Phoenix is an absolutely critical conversation because that’s the point at which people are going to die if the electricity goes out and there are no ways of keeping communities, households and especially vulnerable populations cool. Unfortunately, we do not have a good data set on who has what level of efficiency of air conditioning service across the city. We do not have good insights into whose air conditioners are breaking, how frequently, or how quickly they’re able to get them repaired. We do not have a good understanding of the cost per degree cooling that different households are paying and the differential inequities in that cost. But what we have are examples that suggest that low-income households may be paying four times as much per degree cooling as wealthy households in Phoenix. And we imagine, at least given what we know about programs to upgrade the efficiency of air conditioners, that renters and low-income households aren’t able to take advantage of those programs. So we again imagine that the cost of air conditioning is a much higher burden on our more vulnerable communities, who are then more at risk in extreme heat events.

Given the consequences of outages, we really need everybody involved in that conversation. And that’s hard to do. But I have great and high hopes for our new Office of Resiliency in the governor’s office as a place where some of those conversations might be able to get started, and where we might be able to bring in the diversity of folks who need to be at that table, in order to make sure that the conversation addresses all dimensions of the heat problem.

Ormond: Moving from large systems to small, there’s a sustainability resiliency opportunity. When I think about where the burden lies to take care of people when extreme events happen, it largely lands on the local government: the fire department, police department and community center(s). When we think about trying to build systems in the future that can take care of people when events happen, local resilience is the most important. And that may be as simple as community centers that have their own backup generators, so when people lose air conditioning they have some place they can walk to and be housed for a couple of days.

Additionally, with the amazing changes we’re seeing in battery technology and hybrid wind/solar/battery power plants, we have an opportunity to build a more democratized system and make it more resilient at the same time. But that flies in the face of our regulatory system. The electric utilities want to build things because then they earn a rate of return that’s how they make money. The wealthy can get off the system through independent solar systems and batteries, but what about the people that are truly vulnerable? To the point of low-income households paying more for energy, I had this astounding experience at a public forum where a utility person made a statement about how poor people are so wasteful in energy and they pay so much. And I remember thinking, “Have you ever been in a poor person’s house?” They use so much energy because the homes are leaky and equipment inefficient. I was shocked by the lack of knowledge. When we think about threats, human life really should underpin all of what we’re doing in the electric and gas systems, but we’re in a system where making money is king.

Richter: This returns to a concern of a wider conversation or whiter conversation, as energy planning has generally been racialized. We talk a lot about how we need to have this conversation, but who is the “we?” The conversations are happening, there’s just no action because the energy planning is divorced from the conversations. I think the key issue is this finance structure around what incentivizes certain behavior. Right now, we envision energy as an agent for democracy, but it is also seen as a meritocracy. We accept as part of the American culture that if you can’t afford energy, then you must not deserve it. That’s perfectly encapsulated in that utility person’s comment.

I was at Diné College recently, and on the second day I was there, the electricity went out. I was surprised, but the students got out lanterns and kept working. I asked, “How often does this happen?” and they said every few days. If that happened at ASU, the university would come to a halt. We don’t live within those systems, so we choose not to recognize them as systems that structure the possibilities of our lives. For example, Tempe is in a really privileged space. We get our energy from a lot of places that we don’t acknowledge. But I think of a community like Randolph that was summarily told by SRP that the utility will double the size of its natural gas plant. Now we’re in a political moment where those concerns can actually be heard. But can they be acted upon? We still have a utilitarian principle that if it is for the greater good, i.e. Phoenix Metro, then the hinterlands don’t really matter. It’s just their job to endure this pollution. That is not a system of justice. It’s not a system of equity. It’s a system that still privileges profits and relies on keeping communities separate from each other.

Miller: This is where I’m going to fall back on the College of Global Futures and the Global Futures Laboratory they have the word “futures” in them for a very specific reason. And that is not just because we’re planning and making decisions today that will deliver us into the future. It is because we are building capabilities to think much more ambitiously about what futures might look like, and what we need to do today in order to help orient ourselves toward those futures in which we might want to live. We are already flying the airplane our economy is dependent on these energy systems, we don’t get to stop them for three years and do something different. We’re stuck with these systems and where they are; we have to rebuild them in flight. That’s not going to be easy. But I do think we have huge choices to make about which kinds of futures we intend to live in. These systems now include all kinds of communities in all kinds of ways, and our ability to have a secure energy future impacts people in many other places. We must recognize and build a future in which our ability to have secure energy helps people throughout Phoenix, as well as in other places, build thriving, just futures for themselves. We do that by getting very realistic about what particular kinds of futures look like if we go down particular paths, and not pretend that we can’t think hard about where particular trajectories are taking us. For example, we’re closing a bunch of coal plants. But we don’t seem to be able to take seriously the question of what the future is going to look like if we continue along this trajectory without doing something significant about the economic and social futures of those communities where coal plants currently operate. Our ability to think about the future, to understand where particular kinds of trajectories are taking us and then bring that back into contemporary decision-making is what we have to get much, much better at doing.

Ormond: I agree, we need scenario planning. We know how to do it; it’s an effective tool to examine what happens if the pathway becomes this or what happens if we choose this pathway. You have to think about where you could end up to figure out what steps to take along the way. We, as a state, as a region, as a society need to think about those things. It is a challenge to have those conversations. We know in the near-term that we’re not going to get rid of the monopoly utility construct tomorrow, but the finances that drive the choices utilities make can change. If we want a low-carbon future, or a more democratized or distributed energy system, we can pull people in that direction through financial incentives, changing the rate making process and how utilities earn money. I think that’s all completely doable if we, as a society, determine that addressing carbon and climate change is our priority. People understand that climate change is happening. We need to start making changes that are commensurate with the threats that we’re facing. And that’s difficult, because people have a hard time with change. But more voices speaking, working in the same direction, can help.

Richter: The key term for me is intergenerational justice. That gets us out of short-term, for-profit planning. I love the idea that there’s an opportunity here to use equity and long-term planning as values to inform the creation of a new system. Utilities naturally have to be part of that transition, and then in parentheses, also plan for their own obsolescence or evolution, which is the really tricky part. But they do have a role to play. What do they envision that role to be? For a lot of them, I think they’re envisioning it will be like it was in 1950-1970 without recognizing that as a unique period in global history, building new infrastructure under the same financial and environmental models. So how do you use the utility system and the political system to incentivize and potentially penalize the “business as usual” thinking? How do you connect actual consequences? How do we reframe this conversation, especially among the American public, that energy is both a right and therefore responsibility?

We also need to get these conversations into the community. While I enjoy the conversations we get to host in academia and with communities, I get frustrated about the Global Futures Laboratory because we’re behind a very expensive paywall. We keep our expertise in our classrooms and aim it towards big research grants. How do we bring this out of classrooms and out of policy meetings and proposals, and really bring it to the public and say, “What do you think?” Also, I can’t stand the word “solutions” because it seems to imply that we know what the problem is, or that we know the right question. I’m not convinced that “we” are ever talking about the same question when “we” offer solutions. You can teach people about the energy system, but you also have to simultaneously discuss the political process. That’s really complex the financing, the planning, the zoning, et cetera. It is our responsibility to explain this complexity, make it interesting and bring that to a wider audience.