Ann Cleaveland
Executive Director
The clean energy transition is essential to combatting climate change—but new technologies bring new cybersecurity risks. As more clean energy infrastructure comes online, from large utilities to rooftop solar panels, securing these systems is critical to ensuring a reliable and resilient energy grid. Without robust cybersecurity, power disruptions and vulnerabilities could derail progress toward a sustainable energy future.
Who We Are
The Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) at UC Berkeley is dedicated to advancing the future of cybersecurity through interdisciplinary research, education, and direct engagement to help decision-makers act with foresight and expand who participates in cybersecurity.
Our Secure Clean Energy Initiative focuses on strengthening cyber resilience to ensure that the transition to renewable energy remains reliable and secure in the face of evolving cyber threats. CLTC’s Secure Clean Energy Initiative addresses this challenge by focusing on two key areas and is actively seeking partners to catalyze the next phase of this work.
What We Do
Map Critical Internet-Grid Interdependencies
Our research uniquely examines the bidirectional relationship between power infrastructure and internet infrastructure. As the grid increasingly relies on cloud services and internet connectivity, and as internet providers depend on reliable power, these dependencies create new vulnerabilities that traditional models fail to capture.
Key outcomes:
- Identifying cascading risks: Document how grid failures can disable critical internet infrastructure, while internet disruptions compromise distributed energy resources.
- Engaging hyperscalers: Include cloud service providers and data center operators as essential stakeholders in the shared responsibility model for grid security.
- Creating innovative modeling approaches: Develop frameworks that capture these complex interdependencies to support resilient decarbonization planning.
Strengthen Systemic Cyber Resilience
Together with our partners at the Institute for Security and Technology we bring together key players in the clean energy ecosystem—utilities, manufacturers, technology providers, and government agencies—to identify and address systemic risks through tabletop exercises.
Key outcomes:
- Surfacing key vulnerabilities and best practices in energy sector responses to cyber threats through tabletop exercises to simulate a major cyber incident involving clean energy infrastructure.
- Cultivating cross-sector perspective: engaging different parts of the energy value chain will identify gaps, strengths, and blind spots that are unique or shared
- Generating practical frameworks and guidelines: secure input on actionable frameworks for improving cyber resilience across the clean energy sector, focusing on coordinated response and recovery.
Support Small Clean Energy Firms
Smaller companies manufacturing and operating next-generation clean energy technologies (like batteries and inverters) face significant challenges in implementing strong cybersecurity measures. We will work directly with them to create practical, affordable solutions.
Key outcomes:
- Realistic threat-modeling insights: Help small firms identify and address security vulnerabilities through targeted tabletop exercises.
- Customized security toolkits: Develop and curate easy-to-use security tools tailored to the needs of small clean energy firms.
- Policy impact: Publish and circulate insights and actionable recommendations to policymakers on how to support small firms with the regulatory guidance and other supports.
Why It Matters
- Cyberattacks on clean energy infrastructure could undermine the transition to renewable energy, slowing progress toward climate goals.
- Strengthening security from the ground up ensures that the clean energy grid remains stable and resilient, even as more distributed energy sources come online.
- By securing clean energy infrastructure, CLTC is helping to ensure that the clean energy transition not only reduces emissions but also remains reliable and secure in the face of evolving cyber threats.
CLTC is helping build the foundation for a secure, scalable clean energy future—ensuring that preventable cyber risks do not undermine progress toward climate goals. Contact shanti (at) berkeley.edu to schedule a meeting with our research team to discuss support and engagement in Secure Clean Energy.
You can also subscribe to Nick Merrill’s Secure Clean Energy Substack, where he will be writing monthly about how to create a secure clean energy future—one that’s not only zero-carbon, but abundant: inexpensive, decentralized, and reliable.
