Sponsors (3)
The bill strengthens energy-grid resilience, supply‑chain scrutiny, and federal oversight/transparency for state energy plans, but it increases administrative and compliance costs for states and utilities and introduces some planning uncertainty and limits to public reporting.
Utilities, state governments, and local electricity customers: State energy plans will be required to analyze and plan for physical and cyber threats to local distribution systems, improving grid resilience and reducing outage risk during storms or attacks.
Utilities and equipment suppliers: The bill clarifies that supplying equipment for generation, transmission, and distribution is covered, so supply-chain risks for critical grid equipment must be considered—reducing vulnerability to outages from compromised components.
State governments and utilities: The bill makes a previously discretionary federal action mandatory (the Secretary must act), increasing federal accountability to carry out energy-security duties.
State governments and utilities: The expanded plan content, additional analyses, and the potential for accelerated compliance timelines or conditional federal requirements will impose administrative and compliance costs on states and utilities.
Utilities, state governments, and long‑term investors (including rural communities): A sunset provision in 2031 creates regulatory uncertainty that can deter multi‑year investments in resilience and infrastructure.
Utilities and state governments: Defining 'local distribution system' at 100 kV may exclude some infrastructure or generate disputes about applicability, creating legal and operational ambiguity for planning and compliance.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Introduced March 24, 2026 by Catherine Marie Cortez Masto · Last progress March 24, 2026
Requires State energy security plans to explicitly cover physical and cybersecurity threats to local electric distribution systems (defined as utility-owned infrastructure at voltages of 100 kV or less), adds “supplying equipment for the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity” to a covered list, makes certain Federal actions mandatory rather than discretionary, and sets an expiration date for these provisions of September 30, 2031. Also directs the Government Accountability Office to produce a public assessment by September 30, 2030 on how well State energy security plans (and Federal assistance used to support them) identify, mitigate, and respond to risks to energy infrastructure and supply chains, and to recommend improvements.