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Category: National News

Washington, DC - The Obama Administration is committed to taking responsible steps to modernize our energy infrastructure, create a clean energy economy built to last, combat climate change, and increase  reliance on domestic energy resources.

That is why, today, the Administration released the initial installment of the first-ever Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), which examines how to modernize the Nation’s energy infrastructure to promote economic competitiveness, energy security, and environmental responsibility and take full advantage of American innovation and the new sources of domestic energy supply that are transforming the Nation’s energy marketplace. This report focuses on energy transmission, storage, and distribution (TS&D) infrastructure -- the networks of pipelines, wires, storage, waterways, railroads, and other facilities that form the backbone of our energy system. The QER identifies opportunities these systems provide for a clean and secure energy future, as well as some growing and potential vulnerabilities of these systems. The report also proposes policy recommendations and investments to replace, protect, expand, and modernize TS&D infrastructure.

Later today, Vice President Joe Biden – along with Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren -- will highlight this report at an event at PECO in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he will also discuss the importance of investing in our nation’s energy infrastructure.

The United States has the most advanced energy systems in the world, supplying the reliable, affordable and increasingly clean power and fuels that underpin every facet of our nation’s economy. But our energy landscape is changing dramatically. Solar electricity generation has increased 20-fold since 2008, and electricity generation from wind energy has more than tripled. During that period, the United States has also become the world’s leading producer of oil and natural gas combined. 

The country is less dependent on foreign oil, as a percentage of national oil consumption, than it has been in more than 40 years.  Today’s new cars can go farther on a gallon of gasoline than ever before.  Between 2005 and 2014, U.S. consumption of motor gasoline fell more than two percent despite population growth, while the economy grew 13 percent. And policies to promote energy efficiency have contributed to keeping U.S. electricity consumption flat over that 10-year period, while total energy use declined nearly two percent.

These changes have implications for energy policy and for the Nation’s TS&D infrastructure. The focus of U.S. energy-policy discussions has shifted from worries about rising oil and natural gas imports to debates about how much and what kinds of U.S. energy should be exported, concerns about safety and resilience, integrating renewable sources of energy, and the overriding question of what changes in patterns of U.S. energy supply and demand will be needed—and how they can be achieved—for the United States to do its part in meeting the global climate-change challenge. The fact is that the need to mitigate global climate change by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is already, under the President’s Climate Action Plan, driving changes in the mix of energy-supply options and end-use patterns, and that trend will continue.

Responding to these trends and issues, as well as supporting a 21st century economy, will require that we address the growing vulnerabilities posed by climate change, the evolving energy mix, cyber and physical threats, growing interdependencies, aging infrastructure, and workforce needs. As we are seeing, TS&D infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather events like hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires. Changes in the geography of domestic energy production stress the ability of existing infrastructures to move both liquid fuels and electricity from supply regions to demand centers. Congestion in the nation’s ports, waterways, and rail systems affect the timing and cost of moving not just energy products, but all commodities.

Modernizing the Nation’s TS&D infrastructure also presents the opportunity to enhance U.S. competitiveness in a global economy.  And it will support jobs: approximately 1 million people were employed in energy transmission, storage, and distribution jobs in 2013. By making smart investments, there is the potential to support 1.5 million additional energy sector jobs for the transmission, storage, and distribution segment alone.

Addressing the opportunities, challenges, and vulnerabilities associated with TS&D infrastructure will require action by many parties in the private sector, and coordinated public sector action at the Federal, state, and local levels. This report presents a set of findings and recommendations focused on the Federal role, and organized around the high-level goals of energy security, economic competitiveness, and environmental responsibility.  Its analytically derived objectives reflect an integrated assessment of the adequacy of existing transmission, storage, and distribution infrastructures to meet these goals.  To set us down this track, the Administration is also unveiling two executive actions to modernize and enhance the resilience of our electric grid.

Taking Action Today To Increase Resilience

Building on today’s announcement, and to help guide us down a secure, safe, resilient and clean energy pathway, the Administration is also unveiling two executive actions to modernize and enhance the resilience of our electric grid:

Development Of The QER

In June 2013, through the President’s Climate Action Plan and in response to a 2010 recommendation by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, President Obama initiated a quadrennial cycle of energy reviews to provide a multiyear roadmap for U.S. energy policy. The President also announced the formation of a White House Task Force—co-chaired by the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Director of the Domestic Policy Council and comprising 22 Federal agencies and offices with equities in energy—to develop the QER. 

The President further directed DOE to provide analytical support for the QER and to help manage the interagency process through a secretariat at DOE.  While DOE has undertaken periodic reviews and analyses of the energy sector (including in the “National Energy Strategy” of 1991 and the “Comprehensive Energy Strategy” of 1998), the last national energy policy report was published nearly 14 years ago, and the U.S. energy system has changed very significantly over that period.  In the development of the QER, DOE convened a broad range of stakeholders across the Nation, including technical workshops, 13 formal public stakeholder meetings, and a special series of roundtables on methane emissions from TS&D infrastructure.

As directed by the President, the QER is envisioned as a focused, actionable document designed to provide policymakers, industry, investors, and other stakeholders with unbiased data and analysis on energy challenges, needs, requirements, and barriers that will inform a range of policy options, including legislation.  Each installment of the QER will analyze and make recommendations for a key component of the energy value chain.

Highlights from each of the chapters in this year’s QER, include:

Ensuring the Resilience, Reliability, Safety, and Security of TS&D Infrastructure

Ensuring the resilience, reliability, safety, and security of TS&D infrastructure is a national priority and vital to American competiveness, jobs, energy security, and a clean energy future.  To continue supporting these shared priorities, the QER recommends taking the following additional actions:

Modernizing the Electric Grid

Electricity is central to the well-being of the Nation.  The United States has one of the world’s most reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean electric systems, but it is currently at a strategic inflection point—a time of significant change for a system that has had relatively stable rules of the road for nearly a century.  To enhance the development of a modern electric grid, the QER recommends:

Modernizing U.S. Energy Security Infrastructures in a Changing Global Marketplace

Until recently, the concept of energy security has focused on “oil security” as a proxy for “energy security.”  It is clear, however, that energy security needs to be more broadly defined to cover not only oil but other sources of supply, and to be based not only on the ability to withstand shocks but also to be able to recover quickly from any shocks that do occur. To achieve this shared goal, the QER recommends:

Improving Shared Transport Infrastructures

Changes in the U.S. energy production and use affect the way that energy and other commodities are transported in the United States. The use of transportation modes (e.g., rail, barge, and truck transport) that are also shared by agricultural and other major commodities, has been joined by significant growth in the use of these transport modes by crude oil, refined petroleum products, and petrochemicals.  To better manage shifting utilization patterns, the QER proposes:

Integrating North American Energy Markets

The United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as other North American neighbors, benefit from a vast and diverse energy TS&D network that has enabled the region to achieve economic, energy security, and environmental goals.  To bolster this strong foundation, the QER recommends:

Addressing Environmental Aspects of TS&D Infrastructure

Energy TS&D infrastructure affects the environment in a variety of ways.  While it is important to address the direct environmental impacts and vulnerabilities of TS&D infrastructure, this infrastructure also has enormous potential to enable better environmental performance for the energy system more broadly.  Key examples include carbon dioxide pipeline infrastructure to enable carbon sequestration, smart grid technologies to enable energy efficiency, and long-distance transmission to enable utilization of remote renewable resources.   In addition to recommendations under other headings that will enhance the ability of the United States to achieve its environmental goals, the QER also recommends:

Enhancing Employment and Workforce Training

The workforce needed to build, maintain, and operate energy infrastructures will continue to evolve and, in many cases, grow significantly.  The heavy investment in new U.S. energy infrastructure that is anticipated over the next few decades, combined with the maintenance needed by current infrastructure systems and the looming retirement of a significant fraction of this sector’s labor pool, will stimulate the creation of a wide range of new job opportunities for skilled workers.  This will pose an increasing challenge for workforce development and job training strategies. To overcome these challenges, the QER recommends:

Siting and Permitting of TS&D Infrastructure

In the last decade, there has been a growing awareness of the gap between the times typically needed to permit new generation and production sources of energy and the much longer times needed for TS&D infrastructure.  To continue to promote more timely permitting decisions while protecting our Nation’s environmental, historic, and cultural resources, the QER recommends: