InfrastructureU.S. must invest in energy infrastructure to upgrade outdates systems

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz is calling for a renewed focus on U.S. energy infrastructure, saying new and improved oil pipeline projects are just a portion of a long list of work needed to modernize the country’s outdated system for transporting oil, natural gas, and electricity. “It’s a lot bigger picture than that,” Moniz told the Houston Chronicle. “There are much bigger issues of existing and future integration of our … energy systems, of our energy infrastructure.” In the government’s first Quadrennial Energy Review (QER), an almost 500-page analysis released last week, Moniz calls for building new pipelines, repairing old ones, and insulating electric grids and transformers from storms and terrorist attacks. The review details a road map for updating America’s energy infrastructure and making it more resilient to natural and man-made threats, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Moniz recently stopped by the IHS EnergyCERAWeek conference in Houston and attended a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committeehearing to call for investments in new infrastructure that can keep up with a rapidly evolving energy world. “It is the right time, maybe it’s a little after the right time, for us to make these kind of investments in energy infrastructure,” he said, adding that the investments are not only “strongly connected” to the domestic energy revolution in the oil and gas sector, but to an evolution in renewable power and the way it is generated.

The QER examines the government’s emergency crude stockpile, stored in underground salt domes along the Gulf Coast. The U.S. government launched the petroleum reserve project in 1975 after oil supplies were cut off during the 1973-74 oil embargo, to mitigate future temporary supply disruptions. While two more stockpiles have been added to the crude-focused Strategic Petroleum Reserve — one with heating oil and low-sulfur diesel and another with gasoline — other regional reserves may be needed around the country.

“We’re kind of 40 years past the first oil shock, and it’s a very, very different energy world. It’s a very different oil world,” Moniz said. “We should at least step back and re-examine what we’re doing.”

Fuel shortages in the Northeast after Superstorm Sandy illustrated that unprocessed crude released from the reserve provides little benefit in the short-term when gasoline and other petroleum product supplies are unable to reach areas blocked by extreme weather or major events. The crude reserve was created to handle major global oil disruptions,” Moniz said, and not extreme weather.

In the QER, Moniz promotes federal and state partnerships to make public infrastructure resilient and sustainable. He points to a collaboration between the Energy Department and New Jersey to share the costs of designing a new power grid to supply commuter trains with backup power in case of an emergency. New Jersey Transit trains were stalled by power outages after Superstorm Sandy. The new system is a micro grid that can stay online even when the larger electric grid shuts down. New Jersey used the design to successfully bid for $1.3 billion in Transportation Department funding to build the system.

The QER, ordered by a 2014 Presidential Memorandum, is also a response to climate change, containing proposed energy infrastructure improvements that will help boost renewable power and curb greenhouse gas emissions. In it, Moniz envisions the federal government and its policies influencing state regulators and to a larger extent, utilities and the methods they use to produce and transport energy. “It’s playing defense in some sense with regard to climate,” while also looking at physical and cyber threats to the system. “That’s a very critical part of our discussion.”