Senate ENR Amends and Approves Cybersecurity Bills – 11-19-19

Yesterday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a business meeting to consider three nominations and markup 19 bills. Those bills included three cybersecurity bills that have been covered in this blog. All three of those bills were amended and then passed on voice votes.

S 876, DOE Vet Training

The Committee considered S 875, the Energy Jobs for Our Heroes Act of 2019. A staff amendment was adopted by the Committee rewrote the proposed §1107(f) by removing the grant funding provisions and removed (g) the spending authorization provisions of the bill. A second amendment was proposed by Sen Lee (R,UT) and it was also adopted by the Committee. The Lee amendment provided more detailed information about what was to be included in the Report to Congress required by (h) {changed to (g) by the previous amendment}.

S 2556, Cybersecurity Investment

The Committee considered S 2556, the PROTECT Act. The Committee adopted an amendment in the nature of a substitute. The substitute language:

Adds §219A(c)(2) that adds a prohibition of duplicate recovery to the rate recovery provision; and

Adds §3(a)(2)(E) that adds “an investor-owned electric utility that sells less than 4,000,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year” to the list of entities eligible for the e Rural and Municipal Utility Advanced Cybersecurity Grant and Technical Assistance Program.

S 2714, ARPA-E Reauthorization

The Committee considered S 2714, the ARPA–E Reauthorization Act of 2019. The Committee adopted an amendment. That amendment inserted a new §2(c) and renumbered the subsequent sub-sections. The new subsection amends 42 USC 16538(f). The new language would allow DOE to consider past grant performance during the award of new grants.

Moving Forward

These three bills had significant bipartisan support in Committee, but Lee insisted on being recorded as a Nay vote on each of the bills. This means that he would be likely to raise an objection if the bills were offered for consideration under the Senate’s unanimous consent process. If that were to happen the bills would not be adopted under those provisions and would have to be considered under regular order. None of these bills is important enough to take up the Senate’s time under regular order.

The only other way that these bills could be considered would be as part of a DOE authorization bill.

Committee Hearings – Week of 11-17-19

This week the impeachment hearings continue to attract the main attention of politicians and, to a lesser extent, the public. There are two markup hearings this week; one in the House that will deal with a pipeline safety bill, and one in the senate that will address cybersecurity bills.

Pipeline Safety Hearings

On Tuesday the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a markup hearing that will consider 18 bills. One of those bills is HR 5120 that was introduced last Friday. The official version of the bill has yet to be printed, but a Committee Print is available and a summary is included in the Committee Briefing Notes. I have not yet had a chance to review the bill.

Cybersecurity Hearing

On Tuesday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hold a business meeting that will consider 17 bills and three nominations. The list includes 3 cybersecurity related bills:

S 876, to amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to require the Secretary of Energy to establish a program to prepare veterans for careers in the energy industry, including the solar, wind, cybersecurity, and other low-carbon emissions sectors or zero-emissions sectors of the energy industry;

S 2556, to amend the Federal Power Act to provide energy cybersecurity investment incentives, to establish a grant and technical assistance program for cybersecurity investments;

S 2714, to amend the America COMPETES Act to reauthorize the ARPA-E program,

On the Floor

On Tuesday the House will consider HR 4634; Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2019 (as amended) under the suspension of the rules process. This means that there will be limited debate, no floor amendments and a super majority will be required for passage. A significant bipartisan majority is expected on this bill.

It is likely that the House Rules Committee will take up a continuing resolution some time this week to continue funding the government, probably through sometime next month.

S 876 Introduced – DOE Vet Training

Last month Sen. Duckworth (D,IL) introduced S 867, the Energy Jobs for Our Heroes Act of 2019. The bill would require DOE to establish a program to prepare eligible participants for careers in the energy industry as part of the DOD’s SkillBridge (program web site ‘under construction’) program.

Energy Ready Vets Program

The bill would add a new section to the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It would require DOE to establish the ‘Energy-Ready Vets Program’ to prepare eligible participants for careers in the energy industry. The program would “provide standardized training courses, based, to the maximum extent practicable, on existing industry-recognized certification and training programs, to prepare eligible participants in the program for careers in the energy industry” {new §1107(d)}.

Cybersecurity Training

The program would provide training in five energy sectors, including the cybersecurity sector of the energy industry. The training would prepare participants for jobs in {§1107(d)(1)(C)}:

Cybersecurity preparedness;

• Cyber incident response and recovery;

• Grid modernization, security, and maintenance;

• Resilience planning; and

• Other areas relating to the cybersecurity sector of the energy industry;

The bill provides for a grant program “to assist the industry in developing such an industry-recognized certification and training program” {§1107(f)(1)} when such programs do not currently exist. Funding for the grant programs comes out of a generic “such sums as are necessary to carry out this section” authorization included in §1107(g)(1).

Moving Forward

While Duckworth is not a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, one of her two cosponsors {Sen. Gardner (R.CO)} is. This means that there is a strong possibility that this bill will be considered in Committee. I suspect that there will be bipartisan support for the bill both in Committee and on the floor as it hits three key political targets: veterans, jobs and clean energy (one of the job sectors not covered in this post).

The key problem this bill faces is getting it to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Time is the big issue and the bill is not important enough to get full debate in the Senate. This means that it would have to be considered under the Senate’s unanimous consent process where the voice of a single Senator can stop the bill from being considered. I do not see anything in the bill to draw strong opposition, but ‘objections’ are frequently raised on bills as a means of expressing political opposition to any of a number of loosely related issues.

This bill, however, is certainly a strong candidate for inclusion in a DOE or even DOD authorization bill either as part of the introduced bill or as an amendment.

Commentary

The lack of people with cybersecurity training is an ongoing problem for many industrial sectors and the energy sector specifically. Training veterans for such jobs is a win-win solution. Since the SkillBridge program is targeted at individual military facilities, the provisions of this bill would allow DOE to tailor cybersecurity training programs at facilities with high-concentrations of military members with cybersecurity skills. This could allow the programs to focus on certification skills rather than basic cybersecurity training. This would make it easier for cyber warriors to transition into critical cybersecurity jobs.

Bills Introduced – 03-26-19

Yesterday with both the House and Senate in session there were 50 bills introduced. Of these, one will receive additional coverage in this blog:

S 876 A bill to amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to require the Secretary of Energy to establish a program to prepare veterans for careers in the energy industry, including the solar, wind, cybersecurity, and other low-carbon emissions sectors or zero-emissions sectors of the energy industry, and for other purposes. Sen. Duckworth, Tammy [D-IL]