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Ohio Senate adopts resolution urging investment in electric grid security
Summary
The Ohio Senate unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 2 urging utilities, the governor and Congress to invest in the security, reliability and resiliency of the interconnected electric grid against natural and man-made threats.
The Ohio Senate on May 20 adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution 2 urging electric-utility stakeholders, the governor and the U.S. Congress to invest in the security, reliability and resiliency of the state and national interconnected electric grids against natural and man-made threats.
Senator Johnson, who introduced the resolution on the Senate floor, said grid vulnerabilities range from physical attacks on substations to cyberattacks and natural solar storms and urged action from federal and industry leaders. "If this happened in America today, within a year, 90 percent of us will be dead," he said while describing the potential impact of a Carrington-scale solar storm or a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse on the grid.
The resolution’s nut graf: the Senate framed the action as a call to prompt federal and industry investment rather than a statutory change. Senator Johnson warned about physical attacks on substations and reliance on overseas-made transformers and said Ohio’s interconnection to regional grids makes those vulnerabilities systemic. He said the issue is solvable with investment and called on CEOs, the president and members of Congress to act.
Ranking member Senator Smith, who said she has served on energy-related committees, agreed that the grid requires modernization. She recounted a recent Northeast Ohio outage and cited infrastructure data, arguing that "appropriately modernizing the grid can help us achieve a collective vision of a resilient, reliable, flexible, secure, and sustainable yet still affordable method of delivering electricity." Smith encouraged the Senate to pursue legislative work to upgrade the grid.
The resolution was put to roll call and adopted unanimously, 33-0. The adopted resolution urges stakeholders and federal officials to invest resources to improve grid security and resiliency; it does not itself create new regulations or appropriate funding.
Senator Johnson and Senator Smith framed next steps in different ways on the floor: Johnson emphasized federal and industry investment, while Smith urged that the legislature undertake a comprehensive legislative effort to modernize the grid.
