Two 2018 California Bills Relating to the Grid

SJR-20 was simple. It acknowledged the California State Senate that the electrical grid is under threat – from geomagnetic storms, EMPs, and more – and “urges the President and the Congress of the United States to work together to implement grid hardening measures and to help ensure our nation’s critical electrical infrastructure is protected from threats from electromagnetic pulses and physical attacks on the infrastructure.”

This bill took aim at California’s Office of Emergency Services. The OES plans state responses to disaster scenarios including terrorist attacks, earthquakes, and wildfires.

SB-1076 directly remedied that, requiring “the State Emergency Plan to include preparedness recommendations to harden the critical infrastructure of electrical utilities against an electromagnetic pulse attack, geomagnetic storm event, or other potential cause of a long-term outage.” It passed unanimously.