Speakers at a SERC Reliability-hosted webinar urged state lawmakers, policymakers and regulators to do their part to promote coordination between the natural gas and electric industries to reduce the risk of serious grid incidents like those that occurred in the winter storms of 2021 and 2022. 

SERC held the webinar to provide state-level stakeholders with an overview of the increasingly interdependent gas and electric systems — a topic that has sparked concern in the ERO Enterprise — and suggest ways they can help with the stress during times of increased demand, especially extreme cold periods when gas is needed for electricity generation and home heating. 

Marty Sas, SERC’s manager for reliability assessment, shared some of the regional entity’s concerns in its most recent Regional Risk Report. Sas warned that the ongoing replacement of coal-fired generation by intermittent resources like solar and wind generation has led to “an increased dependency on natural gas” for dispatchable energy. 

“That increases some vulnerability to supply disruptions. Limiting fuel flexibility can threaten generation availability,” Sas said. “Diversifying our fuel mix and enhancing infrastructure resilience are key actions that need to be taken as we move forward around these ever-changing resources and the dependency on natural gas.” 

Heather Polzin, SERC’s senior reliability adviser, added that the gas system also relies on electricity. She cited a 2023 study by Carnegie Mellon University noting that about 10% of pipeline compressor stations in the U.S. are electric-powered “and thus vulnerable to electric power outages.” The study suggested that an outage at one such station “can significantly reduce gas available to downstream generating stations,” leading to outages “as large as or larger than the most severe single-cause failure currently considered in electric reliability planning.” 

Polzin said the topic of gas-electric coordination is particularly prominent for SERC, which “is roughly 50% reliant on natural gas-fueled generation.” In some areas, this dependence is even greater: 75% of the generation in Florida is gas-fired, Polzin said, and nearly 68% of generation in MISO South is gas-fired. The presence of oil and gas refineries in the region presents another challenge. 

“We certainly think of [this] a lot as a winter problem, because of that competing demand with home heat, and you don’t have that in the summer,” Polzin said. “But one of the big risks that we have in the summertime is that over 50% of the [U.S. natural gas] refining capacity is on the Gulf Coast. … Even if a hurricane is not going to be a direct hit, [refineries] often will close down pre-emptively to protect the refining capacity. So that’s one big issue.” 

The speakers reviewed some of the recommendations from FERC and NERC’s joint reports on the 2021 and 2022 winter storms, which included requiring natural gas infrastructure operators to maintain cold weather preparedness plans and creating regional natural gas reliability coordinators similar to the ERO Enterprise. They suggested that regulators and policymakers improve their awareness of their states’ electric and gas systems. 

“Is your state one of the five states that provides about 70% of all the total [U.S.] dry natural gas production?” Polzin said, referring to Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. “Do you know the percentage of the generation resources in your state that rely on natural gas? [SERC] can help you with this information. And do you know which natural gas pipelines your state relies on to produce electric energy, whether they’re interstate or intrastate pipelines, [and] what difference does it make? We can also help with this.” 

Sas emphasized that gas is likely to remain a major part of the generation mix because of its usefulness for providing reliability services. However, he urged listeners to pursue policies that promote diversity of resources while encouraging “cross-sector coordination between gas and electric utilities” and maintaining an awareness of regional risks as outlined in the ERO’s annual risk reports.