Energy and Climate

From communities in Appalachia and Florida to the Hawaiian Islands, no part of the US is untouched by the increased climate-related disasters we’ve seen in the past few years. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is updating and publishing a disaster response framework, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance submitted comments to advocate for stronger integration of digital inclusion activities into post-disaster efforts. NDIA's key recommendations fall under five main categories:

National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson issued a statement on the election results, congratulating President-Elect Trump and touching on electric cooperative policy priorities: 

As communities across the Southeast US continue recovery efforts following the devastating hurricanes of late summer, one refrain stands out: connectivity is critical in disaster scenarios, and when the internet goes down, communities are cut off. Unfortunately, with climate-related risks increasing, many more communities are likely to face chall

It’s clear we need more resiliency in our broadband policy. If nothing else, the hurricanes ravaging the U.S. Southeast have shown us that. In the last few weeks, pervasive wireless and wireline communication outages have left people that are already struggling in the wake of disaster completely cut off from resources, important news updates, and loved ones.

In the late hours of Thursday, September 26, Hurricane Helene made landfall at Keaton Beach (FL). On Friday, downgraded to a tropical storm, Helene made its way up the east coast, leaving a path of destruction through Georgia and the Carolinas.

Hurricane Hellene arrived in Asheville (NC) on the evening of September 26. However, there was a big precursor to the storm, and we had over 15 inches of rain in September before the storm got here. That means the ground was fully saturated, the streams were already running at near-flood conditions, and lakes and reservoirs were already full.

Tornadoes, heavy rain, hurricane-force wind, and storm surge. Any of these could devastate a community.

In 2021 Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA) agreed to lead the administration’s $42 billion plan for expanding high-speed internet to millions of Americans. That year, she tweeted that “we can bring broadband to rural America today.” Today, nearly three years after Congress passed the infrastructure bill that created the program, not one home or business has been connected through it.

The United States could be on the cusp of a “digital Pearl Harbor” which will expose the fragility of the country's communications systems, according to Brookings Institution non-resident senior fellow Blair Levin. Levin’s “digital Pearl Harbor” reference harkens back to comments from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who first coined a variation of the phrase in 2012. At the time, Panetta warned the U.S. could suffer a disastrous digital attack if it didn’t strengthen its cybersecurity posture. A recently reported hack of telecoms networks by China could fit the bill.

Fiber service providers have been given a boost in their pursuit of more energy-efficient networks that can unlock significant power savings thanks to a new project launched by Broadband Forum. The project will seek to lower energy consumption when accessing the internet. The project, which is set to publish its specification in Summer 2025, will encourage the development of technologies that satisfy the power-saving requirements, test plan, and data model it sets out.