On Monday, July 9, nearly 3 million homes and businesses in Texas were suddenly without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl. Today, four days later, over 1 million Texans are entering a fourth day powerless. The acting governor, Dan Patrick, said in a statement that restoring power will be a “multi-day restoration event.” As people wait for this catastrophic grid failure to be remedied, much of southeast Texas, which includes Houston, is enduring dangerous, extreme heat with no air conditioning amid an ongoing heatwave. 

Extreme Heat is the “Top Weather Killer”

As our team at FAS has explained, prolonged exposure to extreme heat increases the risk of developing potentially fatal heat-related illnesses, such as heat stroke, where the human body reaches dangerously high internal temperatures. If a person cannot cool down, especially when the nights bring no relief from the heat, this high core temperature can result in organ failure, cognitive damage, and death. Extreme heat is often termed the “top weather killer,” as it’s responsible for 2,300 official deaths a year and 10,000 attributed via excess deaths analysis.  With at least 10 lives already lost in Texas amidst this catastrophic tragedy, excess heat and power losses are further compounding vulnerabilities, making the situation more dire. 

Policy Changes Can Save Lives

These losses of life and power outages are preventable, and it is the job of the federal government to ensure this. Our team at FAS has previously called for attention to the soaring energy demands and unprecedented heat waves that have placed the U.S. on the brink of widespread grid failure across multiple states, potentially jeopardizing millions of lives. In the face of widespread blackouts, restoring power across America is a complex, intricate process requiring seamless collaboration among various agencies, levels of government, and power providers amid constraints extending beyond just the loss of electricity. There is also a need for transparent protocols for safeguarding critical medical services and frameworks to prioritize regions for power restoration, ensuring equitable treatment for low-income and socially vulnerable communities affected by grid failure events.

As a proactive federal measure, there needs to be a mandate for the implementation of an Executive Order or an interagency Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) mandating the expansion of public health and emergency response planning for widespread grid failure under extreme heat. This urgently needed action would help mitigate the worst impacts of future grid failures under extreme heat, safeguarding lives, the economy, and national security as the U.S. moves toward a more sustainable, stable, and reliable electric grid system.Therefore, given the gravity of these high-risk, increasingly probable scenarios facing the United States, it is imperative for the federal government to take a leadership role in assessing and directing planning and readiness capabilities to respond to this evolving disaster.

Image via NWS/Donald Sparks

Soaring energy demands and unprecedented heatwaves have placed the U.S. on the brink of a severe threat with the potential to impact millions of lives: widespread grid failure across multiple states. While the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), tasked with overseeing grid reliability under the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), has issued warnings about the heightened risk of grid failures, the prospect of widespread summer blackouts looms large amid the nation’s unpreparedness for such scenarios.

As a proactive measure, there needs to be a mandate for the implementation of an Executive Order or an interagency Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) mandating the expansion of Public Health and Emergency Response Planning for Widespread Grid Failure Under Extreme Heat. This urgently needed action would help mitigate the worst impacts of future grid failures under extreme heat, safeguarding lives, the economy, and national security as the U.S. moves toward a more sustainable, stable, and reliable electric grid system.

When the lights go out, restoring power across America is a complex, intricate process requiring seamless collaboration among various agencies, levels of government, and power providers amid constraints extending beyond just the loss of electricity. In a blackout, access to critical services like telecommunications, transportation, and medical assistance is also compromised, which only intensifies and compounds the urgency for coordinated response efforts. To avert blackouts, operators frequently implement planned and unplanned rolling blackouts, a process for load shedding that eases strain on the grid. However, these actions may lack transparent protocols and criteria for safeguarding critical medical services. Equally crucial and missing are frameworks to prioritize regions for power restoration, ensuring equitable treatment for low-income and socially vulnerable communities affected by grid failure events.

Thus, given the gravity of these high-risk, increasingly probable scenarios facing the United States, it is imperative for the federal government to take a leadership role in assessing and directing planning and readiness capabilities to respond to this evolving disaster.

Challenge

Grids are facing unprecedented strain due to record-high temperatures, which reduce their energy transmission efficiency and spike demand for air conditioning during the summer. On top of this, new industries are pushing grids to their limits. The Washington Post and insights from the utility industry cite the exponential growth of artificial intelligence and data centers for cloud computing and crypto mining as drivers of a nearly twofold increase in electricity consumption over the past decade. 

Projections from NERC paint a dire picture: between 2024 and 2028, an alarming 300 million people across the United States could face power outages. This underscores the pressing need for robust emergency response and public health planning.

The impact of power loss is especially profound for vulnerable populations, including those reliant on electricity-dependent medical equipment and life-saving medications that require refrigeration. Extreme heat significantly increases public health risks by exacerbating mental health, behavioral disorders, and chronic illnesses such as heart and respiratory conditions, and increasing the likelihood of preterm births and developmental issues in infants and children. Excessive temperatures also impose burdens on older adults.

Since 2015, national power outages have surged by over 150% owing to demand and extreme weather amplified by climate change. Increasing temperatures can cause transformers to overheat and explode, sometimes sparking fires and cascading outages. Other types of severe weather events, such as lightning strikes, high winds, and flying debris, further escalate the risk of utility infrastructure damage.

In 2020, 22 extreme weather events – from cyclones to hurricanes, heat, and drought – cost the U.S. a combined $95 billion. The following year, disasters like the Texas winter storm and the Pacific Northwest heatwave vividly illustrated the severe consequences of extreme weather on grid stability. To put this into perspective, 

• The Pacific Northwest heatwave resulted in thousands of heat-related emergency department visits and over 700 deaths. 
• During the Texas winter storm, 4.5 million customers went without power, leading to over 240 deaths and economic damages estimated at $130 billion.

These events led to rolling blackouts, thousands of heat-related emergency room visits, numerous deaths, and substantial economic losses. This remains an actively ongoing paradigm, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 2023 Billion-dollar disaster report confirming 28 weather and climate disasters in a single year, surpassing the previous record of 22 in 2020, with a price tag of at least $92.9 billion.

Historical disasters, such as Hurricane Maria in 2017 and the Northeastern blackout in 2003, are stark reminders of the devastating impact of prolonged power outages. The aftermath of such events includes loss of life, disruptions to healthcare access, and extensive economic damages. 

• Hurricane Maria affected 1.6 million people, with loss of electricity for 328 days, 4600 direct deaths – 70 times the official toll – and an estimated third more excess deaths attributed to the lack of access to health care, and an estimated $90 billion in damages.
• The Northeastern blackout impacted 30 million customers across the U.S. and Canada, causing at least 11 deaths and estimated economic losses of $6 billion.

A stark 2023 study reported that “If a multi-day blackout in Phoenix coincided with a heat wave, nearly half the population would require emergency department care for heat stroke or other heat-related illnesses.” Under such conditions, the researchers estimate that 12,800 people in Phoenix would die.

During these events, restoring power and providing mass care falls on various entities. Utility and power operators are tasked with repairing grid infrastructure, while the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) coordinates interagency actions through its National Response Framework and Emergency Support Functions (ESFs).

For example, ESF #6 handles mass care missions like sheltering and feeding, while ESF #8 coordinates public health efforts, overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). FEMA’s Power Outage Incident Annex (POIA) enables utility operators to request support through ESF #12.While there is some testing of system responses to blackouts, few states have conducted exercises at scale, which is crucial, given the immense complexity of restarting grid infrastructure and coordinating mass care operations simultaneously.

Opportunity

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Liberty Eclipse Program exemplifies a successful public-private partnership aimed at bolstering energy sector preparedness against cyberattacks on the grid. Similarly, FEMA conducts numerous Incident Command Systems (ICS) training annually, emphasizing collaboration across governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the private sector.

By leveraging interagency mechanisms like MOUs, FEMA, DOE, and HHS can integrate and expand exercises addressing heat-induced grid failure into existing training frameworks. Such collaborative efforts would ensure a comprehensive approach to preparedness. Additionally, funds typically earmarked for state and local agency training could cover their participation costs in these exercises, optimizing resource utilization and ensuring widespread preparedness across all government levels.

There are also several federal policy efforts currently aligned with this proposal’s objectives, demonstrating a concerted effort to address related challenges through legislation, executive branch actions, programs, and precedents. Notable legislative initiatives, such as Rep. Ruben Gallego’s proposal to amend the Stafford Act, underscore a growing recognition of the unique threats posed by extreme heat events and the need for proactive federal measures.

Simultaneously, regulatory initiatives, such as those by FERC, signal a proactive stance in enhancing energy infrastructure resilience against extreme weather events. Building on an established precedent, FERC could direct NERC to create extreme heat reliability standards for power sector operators, akin to those established for extreme cold weather in 2024 (E-1 | RD24-1-000), further ensuring the reliable operation of the Bulk Electric System (BES).A pivotal resource informing our proposal is the 2018 report by the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC), which emphasizes the significance of addressing catastrophic grid failure and underscores ongoing efforts dedicated to this pressing issue. Tasked with assessing the nation’s preparedness for “catastrophic power outages beyond modern experience,” the report offers invaluable insights and recommendations, particularly relevant to the following recommendation.

Plan of Action

To enhance national resilience, save tens of thousands of lives, and prevent significant economic losses, the National Security Council (NSC) should coordinate collaboration between implicated agencies (DOE, HHS, and FEMA) on grid resilience under extreme heat conditions and work to establish an interagency MOU to fortify the nation’s resilience against extreme heat events, with a specific focus on disaster planning for grid failure. This proposal will have minimal direct impact on the federal budget as it will use existing frameworks within agencies such as FEMA, the DOE, and HHS. These agencies already allocate resources towards preparedness training and testing, as evidenced by their annual budgets. 

Recommendation 1. NSC should initiate a collaboration between DOE, HHS, and FEMA.

The NSC should direct DOE to assess grid resilience under extreme heat and coordinate and prepare for widespread grid failure events in collaboration with FEMA and HHS. This collaboration would involve multi-state, multi-jurisdictional entities, tribal governments, and utilities in scaling planning and preparedness.

Under this coordinated action, federal agencies, with input from partners in the NSC should undertake the following steps:

The DOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), in collaboration with FERC and NERC, should develop comprehensive extreme heat guidelines for utilities and energy providers. These guidelines should include protocols for monitoring grid performance, implementing proactive maintenance measures, communicating concerns and emerging issues, and establishing transparent and equitable processes for load shedding during extreme heat events. Equitable and transparent load shedding is critical as energy consumption rises, driven in part by new industries like clean tech manufacturing and data centers.

FEMA should:

• Update the National Incident Management System to include extreme heat-induced grid failure in disaster response scenarios.
• Conduct risk assessments and develop a whole community approach to emergency response and preparedness plans to address the scale of widespread, multi-state grid failure events. This is in line with FEMA’s goal to increase resilience in the face of more frequent, far-reaching, and widespread natural and manmade disasters.
• Collaborate with state, tribal, and local governments, utilities, NGOs, and other partners to identify critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and prioritize mitigation and response measures, incorporating an equity mapping component to ensure equitable distribution of resources and assistance.

HHS should strengthen functions under ESF#8 to deliver public health services during extreme heat-induced grid failure events, with enhanced coordination between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).

Recommendation 2. Establish an interagency MOU

An interagency MOU should streamline coordination and collaboration on extreme heat disaster planning and preparedness for grid failure. Further, these agreements should prepare agencies to facilitate cross-sector collaboration with states and local governments through the establishment of a national task force. 

This MOU should outline the following actions:

• Joint task force: Create a task force comprising lead representatives from relevant agencies and partner organizations to develop, advance, and test extreme heat-induced grid failure disaster planning and preparedness. This task force would lead efforts to formulate planning strategies, conduct disaster training exercises, and facilitate the exchange of critical information among emergency managers, public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) teams, utilities, and medical providers. 
• Information sharing protocols: Develop standardized protocols for sharing data and intelligence on heatwave forecasts, grid stability alerts, and response capabilities across agencies and jurisdictions. 
• Training and exercise programs: Coordinate the development and implementation of training exercises to test and improve response procedures to extreme heat events across sectors.
• Public outreach and education: Collaborate on public outreach campaigns to raise awareness about heat-related risks and preparedness measures. Disseminate existing communication tools and education programs developed for weather disasters through local agencies to enhance family and neighborhood resilience to extreme heat-induced grid failures. Special attention should be given to meeting the needs of vulnerable populations, with a strong emphasis on equity, public health, and social cohesion. Resources such as the HHS emPOWER Program Platform and ArcGIS mapping tools like the National Integrated Heat Health Information System’s (NIHHIS) “Future Heat Events and Social Vulnerability,” FEMA’s Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT), or the CDC’s Environmental Justice and Map Dashboard offer data-driven approaches to achieve this objective.
• Community resilience: FEMA, branches of HHS, CDC, and ASPR, in collaboration with branches of the NOAA, including the National Weather Service and the NIHHIS, should work to help communities fortify their resilience against widespread blackouts during extreme heat events. Leveraging existing weather disaster resources for storms, fires, and hurricanes, resilience planning should be expanded and adapted to address the loss of electricity, water, and sanitation systems; communication breakdowns; transportation disruptions; and interruptions in medical services under extreme heat conditions.

Conclusion

This proposal emphasizes planning for blackouts and response readiness when the lights go out across wide swaths of America during extreme heat. Addressing this critical gap in federal disaster response planning would secure the safety of millions of citizens and prevent billions of dollars in potential economic losses. 

An Executive Action or interagency MOU would facilitate coordinated planning and preparedness, leveraging existing frameworks and engaging stakeholders beyond traditional boundaries to effectively manage potential catastrophic, multi-state grid failures during heat waves. Specific steps to advance this initiative include ensuring no ongoing similar exercises, scheduling meetings with pertinent agency leaders, revisiting policy recommendations based on agency feedback, and drafting language to incorporate into interagency MOUs.

Using existing authorities and funding, implementing these recommendations would safeguard lives, protect the economy, and bolster national security, particularly as the U.S. moves toward a more sustainable, stable, and reliable electric grid system.

This idea of merit originated from our Extreme Heat Ideas Challenge. Scientific and technical experts across disciplines worked with FAS to develop potential solutions in various realms: infrastructure and the built environment, workforce safety and development, public health, food security and resilience, emergency planning and response, and data indices. Review ideas to combat extreme heat here.

This policy memo was written by the Federation of American Scientists in collaboration with the Pima County Department of Health (Dr. Theresa Cullen, Dr. Julie Robinson, Kat Davis), which provided research and information support to the authors. The Pima County Department of Health seeks to advance health equity and environmental justice for the citizens of Arizona and beyond.

Achieving energy decarbonization in America will require a power grid supplied by renewable energy and backed by ample energy storage. The challenge is that many types of renewable energy provide power intermittently depending on factors such as the time of day or weather conditions. To maintain grid reliability while working towards a nation powered by 100% renewable energy, the Biden-Harris Administration should accelerate adoption of distributed energy resources and expand transmission capacity to create a more unified national power grid. These efforts will increase equitable access to clean energy, accelerate investment in renewables, and create thousands of long-term, high-skilled jobs in a robust American energy sector.

Challenge and Opportunity

The U.S. power grid was built in—and designed for—a previous energy era: one in which on-demand, regionally located energy supplies (such as coal-fired power plants) are delivered to thousands of customers along one-direction transmission lines and managed by public utilities that operate as local monopolies.

But as our nation pushes to replace fossil fuels with cleaner sources of power, the energy landscape will look quite different. Many types of renewable energy provide power intermittently depending on factors such as the time of day or weather conditions. Supplies of such energy sources cannot be ramped up easily (or at all) during periods of peak demand. Meanwhile, smart-and-distributed-energy technologies—such as smart thermostats, rooftop solar, and electric vehicles—have led to an increasingly dynamic and complex power grid. 

The policy response to these rapid changes in the way we generate power has mostly constituted a patchwork of efforts at the state and regional level. Federal attention to renewables has focused largely on tax incentives and on regulation via orders from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). For instance, FERC’s recent order opening wholesale energy markets to distributed energy resources is an important step towards increasing the share of renewables in the U.S. energy sector. Incentives to increase adoption of renewables and investment in research and development (R&D) to improve performance and utility of renewables are essential as well. But to realize a quick and smooth transition to a clean-energy future, concerted action is needed to tackle the intermittency challenge that renewables pose.

Such action can proceed via two complementary pathways simultaneously. The first pathway is using technology advances like vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration, demand response, smart thermostats, and energy storage to flexibly shift load demand. These technologies help guide certain discretionary types of energy consumption (e.g., running a load of laundry) to occur during times when renewable-energy supply is high but demand is low, and can even enable consumers to return energy to the grid (e.g., by plugging in a parked electric vehicle so that the vehicle’s battery can be used as a power source) to during periods of peak demand.

Unfortunately, innovative energy-management technologies are markedly underutilized in the U.S. power sector. Distorted market-incentive structures, inadequate control protocols governing relationships between operators and consumers, and reliability concerns have all made utilities reluctant to embrace a more dynamic grid. Moreover, grid users (i.e., residential and commercial customers) cannot currently participate in an open energy market on an equal footing with utilities. This means that our nation is not realizing the full value of services that customers can provide to a power grid.

A smarter grid-operating system would (1) make it easier for operators to integrate distributed energy resources (DER) with more conventional types of power supplies, (2) economically incentivize changes in user behavior to smooth out energy-demand curves, and (3) enable everyday Americans to invest in distributed clean-energy technologies and earn returns for providing various services to the power grid. These steps in turn would greatly facilitate large-scale integration of renewables into the U.S. power mix.

The second pathway for addressing the intermittency problem is to finally create a connected and integrated American power grid. This would enable areas with steady supplies of renewable energy—such as solar in the Southwest, wind in Texas and the Midwest, and off-shore wind in New England—to deliver power to different parts of the country as needed. Preliminary studies done by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have demonstrated the economic and environmental benefits of unifying currently disconnected sections of the American power grid. Examples from California and Texas illustrate the need to and benefits of expanding national transmission capacity.

California’s power grid highlights the problems of building aggressive renewable energy portfolios without sufficient transmission. As renewable-energy capacity in California has increased, so too has curtailment—i.e., deliberate reduction in output—of that capacity (Figure 1). Roughly half of this curtailment has been due to transmission constraints. Transmission constraints have also prevented creation of approximately 72,000 potential American jobs from renewable-energy projects in the Midwest.

Figure 1

Insufficient transmission capacity coupled with increasing renewable-energy production in California is resulting in significant curtailment, or waste, of renewable energy in the state. (Source: California ISO. (2021).

In Texas, the 2021 winter storm Uri recently demonstrated an even more dire consequence of limited interconnection across our nation’s power infrastructure: the disastrous failure modes that can manifest in isolated power grids. When Uri hit, grid operators simultaneously encountered high load demand as residents turned up their heaters and inadequate energy supply as naturalgas power plants began failing in the cold weather. The rolling power failures experienced in Texas during the storm could have been mitigated if Texas had been able to import energy from other grids. Connecting the regional power grids that exist in the United States will improve grid resiliency across the nation by allowing regions to draw from each other as circumstances and local conditions demand.

Strengthening the U.S. power grid through improved use of energy-management technologies and better regional interconnections will have benefits that extend beyond grid flexibility and resilience. Grid modernization will create jobs across America in the construction, manufacturing, and energy sectors. By empowering rate-payers to produce their own energy, sell back surplus energy to the grid, and be rewarded for shifting energy-consumption patterns in response to grid conditions, grid modernization will generate economic value for consumers. By encouraging development of distributed energy resources, grid modernization will allow rural communities to replace expensive and burdensome propane shipments with continuously flowing electricity from local solar and storage installations. By transforming the U.S. power grid from a collection of regional entities into an interconnected, national resource, grid modernization will allow energy developers to tap into a national energy market instead of being limited by regional boundaries. And by creating a more unified energy sector, one in which states and communities rely on each other for power, grid modernization might even result in a more united country.

Plan of Action

The federal government plays a critical role in regulating and maintaining the nation’s grid infrastructure. As such, there is much that the Biden-Harris Administration can do—by using existing executive authority and by working with Congress on legislative actions—to strengthen the resilience of the U.S. power grid and foster integration of distributed energy resources and renewables into the U.S. power sector. Progress on these fronts will help transition the United States towards a 100% clean-energy future while creating industries and jobs centered around clean-energy resources, building up America’s advanced manufacturing base, and generating new economic opportunities for all Americans.

Actions using existing executive authority

Improve coordination between federal and state entities to reduce regulatory barriers to energy development. The federal government can support interstate grid projects (such as regional interconnections) by helping coordinate state legislatures and by reducing regulatory burdens related to such projects. In particular, FERC plays an important role in coordinating regional grid investments and planning across states (such as the Eastern seaboard’s off-shore wind grid). The Biden-Harris Administration should prioritize this function of FERC in order to reduce the bureaucratic hurdles faced by energy developers. The new White House Office of Domestic Climate Policy (Climate Policy Office) can play an additional coordinating role, helping to align technical research conducted at the Department of Energy (DOE)‘s national labs with policy and regulatory work conducted through the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Department of Interior, the Department of Defense, and other relevant federal entities. Finally, the Climate Policy Office can work with state legislatures to provide state-specific recommendations (i.e., recommendations tailored to the unique natural resources and electricity market structures of each state) on how to best incentivize investment and job growth in the energy industry.

Actions involving collaboration with Congress

Scale R&D innovations in clean-energy technologies by increasing relevant DOE funding. The federal government can use its federal budget to help scale R&D innovations in clean energy and help advance those innovations towards manufacturing and production. By accelerating commercialization and mass production of clean-energy innovations, federal investment will help make clean energy more affordable for American consumers, while simultaneously fostering job growth in the American energy sector. To that end, the next White House budget proposal should include significant funding increases for DOE, in particular for DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE)¹, Loan Program Office (LPO), and Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy (ARPA-E). Increasing funding for these offices, which use different financing schemes to invest in technologies at different stages of commercialization, is a direct way for the federal government to scale up American-made energy technologies. These three offices heave a proven ability to identify promising candidates for energy innovation.² Increasing appropriations for these high-impact offices by $500M will represent a more than 10% increase in each offices’ budget: enough to make a difference, but not a dramatic departure from the budget increases already appropriated by Congress from FY 2019– FY 2020.

Broaden the definition of “qualifying facilities” to allow everyday Americans to participate in energy markets. Broadening the definition of “qualifying facility (QF)” in the Power Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) of 1978 to include energy storage, power quality factors, and demand response would require utilities to compensate energy providers for a wider range of services: i.e., services that go beyond simple energy production. The power grids of today and of the future are more than a collection of relatively fixed energy demands and supplies. Broadening the definition of QF would acknowledge the increasingly dynamic nature of the power grid, where excess supply often needs to be stored for later and where some portion of demand load can be shifted to different times of day. In particular, broadening the definition of QF would require utilities to (1) treat their own customers as first-class suppliers for a diverse set of potential use-cases in the energy marketplace and (2) properly compensate rate-payers for any services they provide to the power grid. Ensuring the market properly rewards customers for adopting novel clean-energy technologies will spur clean-energy market growth, drive innovation, and generate economic value for individual Americans newly able to participate in electricity markets.

Encourage construction of additional transmission capacity via tax incentives and loan programs. Tax credits have historically been a popular way for Congress to incentivize development of renewable energy such as wind and solar.³ By making the construction of additional transmission capacity similarly eligible for tax credits, Congress can support a critical piece of our nation’s grid infrastructure while creating construction jobs across the country.⁴