Energy Sector Resilience

Our energy infrastructure faces multiple natural and man-made threats, including short-term extreme weather events, long-term climate trends, cyber and physical attacks and other hazards. Reducing vulnerabilities from and increasing resilience to these diverse threats will be critical to minimizing the economic losses from energy service interruptions that are estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars per year in the United States alone. The webinar began with an introduction to the concept of resilience and how it applies to the energy sector. Panelists then discussed why resilience is a growing concern and what tools are available to assess energy sector vulnerabilities and resilience options. The panelists showed several examples of recent resilience studies conducted in different regions in the United States, and they discussed how the studies apply to other regions in the world.