Sponsors (5)
The bill strengthens planning and federal oversight to improve local-grid reliability and resilience to cyber, supply-chain, and physical threats, but it raises costs and administrative burdens for states and utilities, introduces information‑sharing and transparency trade‑offs, and includes a near-term sunset that creates investment uncertainty.
State governments, local utilities, and the communities they serve (rural and urban) will have expanded planning for local distribution and threat scenarios (weather, physical attacks, outages), improving reliability and preparedness for outages at the distribution level.
Utilities, state governments, and equipment suppliers will coordinate more on cybersecurity and supply‑chain risks and repairs, strengthening resilience to cyberattacks, supply interruptions, and physical threats that could disrupt energy service.
State governments and utilities will get more consistent federal support because the Department of Energy is required to carry out specified actions, which can make assistance and oversight timelier and more reliable.
State governments and utilities will incur additional planning, coordination, and compliance costs (including potential new requirements arising from GAO recommendations), increasing costs for utilities and possibly ratepayers.
The statute’s sunset date (Sept 30, 2031) creates uncertainty for long‑term state and utility investment and planning decisions for distribution infrastructure.
Expanding information-sharing about cybersecurity and supply‑chain vulnerabilities raises risks of exposing sensitive infrastructure details, while limited withholding of some information also restricts full public scrutiny.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires State energy security plans to cover local distribution systems and address weather, physical attacks, supply-chain, and cybersecurity threats, plus a GAO evaluation by 9/30/2030.
Official title: To amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act to require States to include supporting the physical security, cybersecurity, and resilience of local distribution systems in State energy security plans.
Introduced January 27, 2026 by Robert E. Latta · Last progress July 13, 2026
Amends federal law governing State energy security plans to require states to address vulnerabilities in local electric distribution systems, add weather, physical attack, supply-chain, and cybersecurity threats, and to include mitigation, response, and recovery measures. It clarifies submission/eligibility rules, requires the Energy Secretary to carry out a specified action rather than permitting it, and sunsets the amended authority on September 30, 2031. Directs the U.S. Comptroller General (GAO) to produce a publicly releasable evaluation, due by September 30, 2030, that assesses how State plans improved risk identification, mitigation, and response, describes federal assistance used, analyzes implementation of the amended law, and recommends improvements for federal-state coordination.