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The Importance of Resilient, Reliable, Safe, and Secure TS&D
Infrastructure
Building a resilient, reliable, safe, and secure energy infrastructure is a national priority and vital to American
competitiveness, jobs, energy security, and a clean energy future. President Obama highlighted the importance
of energy infrastructure in Presidential Policy Directive-21, in which energy infrastructures were described as
“uniquely critical.”
Presidential Policy Directive-21 a
In February 2013, the President broadened the national effort to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient
critical infrastructure by issuing Presidential Policy Directive-21, Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience. The directive
applies to all critical infrastructures, but calls out energy infrastructures as being “uniquely critical” due to the enabling
functions they provide across all other critical infrastructures. This document goes on to define resilience as“the ability to
prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions. Resilience includes the
ability to withstand and recover from deliberate attacks, accidents, or naturally occurring threats or incidents.” Threats
may include natural or human-made hazards, such as hurricanes or physical threats. The consequences of these hazards to
infrastructure broadly affect social welfare. They go beyond the ability of a system to operate and address the vitality of our
national safety, prosperity, and well-being.
a
The White House Office. “Presidential Policy Directive 21 - Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience.” February 12, 2013.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/12/presidential-policy-directive-critical-infrastructure-securityand-resil.
Accessed February 2, 2015.
TS&D infrastructures—key components of the Nation’s energy systems—include approximately 2.6 million
miles of interstate and intrastate pipelines, 142 operable refineries, about 642,000 miles of high-voltage
transmission lines, and almost 6.3 million miles of electricity distribution lines. 1 These vast energy TS&D
networks reliably deliver electricity, transportation fuels, and heat to more than 300 million American
consumers daily and provide industry with feedstocks for a large range of products. The U.S. bulk electric
power transmission system, for example, had high availability (97–98 percent) during the period from 2008 to
2013. 2 In less than one decade, the U.S. natural gas and oil TS&D infrastructures have successfully connected
significant new sources of supply to processing facilities and consumers. In addition, in just a few short years,
ethanol has moved from a niche fuel to 10 percent of the Nation’s gasoline supply, supported by a TS&D
system that has been flexible enough to accommodate this growth.
The imperative for resilient TS&D infrastructures going forward is to maintain the high performance of the
existing systems; to continue to accommodate significant growth in domestic supplies; and to manage and
adapt to new technologies, threats, and vulnerabilities in cost-effective ways. These vulnerabilities are growing
and exacerbated by climate change.
In addition, TS&D infrastructures are becoming increasingly interdependent and interconnected. These
extremely complex systems consist of physical TS&D facilities (such as transmission lines, pipelines, and
storage facilities); cyber-dependent communications or control networks; roadways, railways, and waterways;
and human decision makers (such as consumers, legislators, investors, and CEOs). 3, 4 A key interdependency
(and vulnerability) for all sectors and critical infrastructures is reliance on electricity, making its reliability a
fundamental need and requirement economy-wide.
QER Report: Energy Transmission, Storage, and Distribution Infrastructure | April 2015 2-3