Check out Amory Lovins interview on Charlie Rose

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I first discovered Amory Lovins when I was doing research on the vulnerability of the power grid. I considered writing a book about how easy it would be to take down the grid, but lo and behold, Mr. Lovins already wrote that book. It's called Brittle Power, and it was written 20 years ago. Its a very detailed report, prepared for the CIA, intended to let the world know that the power grid is like a giant Jenga game. Pull out the right blocks, the whole thing will come tumbling down.

Since '83 little has been done to mitigate the risk. The threat of widespread blackout - either accidental, as in 2003, or intentional, is still very real, and is probably greater now than it was then.

The gist of the concern is this: With sufficient information about the power grid, sufficient power engineering knowlege, and the guts and motive to cause mahem, a few people can take down large sections of the US power grid. A handful of bad guys could topple strategically located transmission towers; cause a few power line, natural gas pipeline and major coal railway interruptions; and at the same time do some technical or social hacking could with relatively little effort, kick off a cascading outage.

A resulting widespread blackout could take hours, if not days, to rectify, as it will take time to identify and fix the problems, and turn all those plants back on again in a sequence that doesn't do further damage to the grid.

Now is the risk of power outages a greater threat to national security - or more spectacular than say, blowing up a refinery, flying planes into buildings, or spreading some awful biological disease? Surely not. Worrying about power grid security is probably down on the list somewhere well behind inspecting cargo containers and keeping bombs off of planes. Besides, I would much rather endure a couple days in the dark rather than come hurtling down from 30,000 feet in the air, or suffering a long painful death of some icky biological poison any day. So yes, this is a low priority concern. But could it happen? Absolutely.

What can be done to reduce the risk? Theoretically, technological improvements are slowly making the grid less vulnerable. Smart grids that can automatically route power and create isolated "islands" to minimize the areas where blackouts will occur is one step. I say theoretically, because it isn't clear to me if these technological improvements are keeping pace with increasing demand growth. the grid grows larger every day with every new iPod and computer plugged into it.

Distributed generation is best bet for grid security in the long term. Rather than relying on large centralized nukes and coal plants to provide power, we will rely and more, smaller power plants. Wind turbines in our neighborhood, solar panels on our roofs, and fuel cells in our basements will ensure that our power is nearby, we will at least have backup power, and we will rely less on those big transmission lines that carry power to us from those big plants hundreds of miles away.