ABSTRACT
The government’s role in addressing energy resilience includes two primary functions. The first is providing public goods like national defense, education, and public health. The second is addressing what economists call market failures. This could take the form of regulating natural monopolies (like electric utilities), performing high-risk research and development that the market would not normally pursue (as we do at our national laboratories), or ensuring that externalities are built into market prices or otherwise addressed. This chapter discusses how government policies and programs can foster energy resilience. Government agencies are likely to already have an internal analysis of which activities are mission critical and which are most susceptible to various threats. Once a government organization understands the risks it faces, it can consider possible solutions. Governments tend to have a greater level of control over the land and facilities where their operations take place, giving them options that may not be available to some commercial players.
