By Michael Razeeq
Barrels and Bytes:
The Energy Transition, Digital Transformation, and Cybersecurity
“I
t is difficult to think of two issues with a greater potential to negatively impact both our natural environment and the global economy than climate change and cyber attacks.”1 In 2018, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, Americans viewed cyber attacks, terrorism, and climate change as the three most significant risks to the security of the United States.2 Although the same survey conducted in 2020 identified, among other things, the spread of infectious diseases as top of mind,3 cyberattacks and climate change likely will remain major concerns for Americans for years to come. The energy industry, which includes a range of sub-industries, such as oil and gas, coal, renewables, nuclear power, and electric power, and which includes business activities that range from mining to transportation to nuclear fission, is essential to the global economy. If not already clear before the onset of the global pandemic, that fact is now obvious. As a critical infrastructure sector, energy industry participants must ad-
dress climate change and cyber attacks to ensure society is able to reap the benefits of the products and services the industry delivers in a sustainable way. The Intersection of Climate Change and Cybersecurity Anyone who has attended an energy industry conference in recent years will have noted the increasing number of presentations on climate change and cybersecurity, albeit typically in separate CLE presentations. “Although the atmosphere and cyberspace are distinct arenas, they share similarities of overuse, difficulties of enforcement, and the associated challenges of collective inaction and free riders.”4 Apart from those commonalities, the two issues are linked because achieving cyber resilience is necessary for energy companies to effectively address climate change. Addressing climate change will require substantial investments of capital from energy companies and other stakeholders. Digital technologies will underpin much of the global effort to combat climate change, and energy companies must have confidence that these technologies are reasonably secure before investing large sums of money to procure and deploy them. Without that confidence, companies will be slower to adopt or may even forego adopting the technologies altogether. As an example of the potential delays that uncertainty regarding new technology can cause, it is worth noting that the maritime industry, which, like the energy industry, plans for capital-intensive, long-term projects, has been slow to order new ships that can run on cleaner fuels because ship owners are not sure which technology will remain viable in 20 years.5 To avoid similar uncertainty about the digital technologies needed to combat climate change, the energy industry must work with its stakeholders toward resiliency against cyber attacks. The Energy Transition On December 12, 2015, 195 countries
