Advanced Energy Perspectives

In July, associations representing utilities and state regulatory agencies asked the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overturn portions of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s landmark Order No. 841. In that order, FERC adopted critical regulatory reforms that require regional wholesale electricity market operators to remove barriers to the participation of energy storage technologies in their markets. Last week, AEE led a broad coalition of clean energy associations and public interest advocates in formally intervening in the case to urge the court to uphold FERC’s bipartisan effort to remove regulatory barriers to the growth of electric storage. The entire advanced energy industry has much at stake.

Last month, elected leaders in the Old Dominion crowed as CNBC crowned Virginia “The Best State for Business” in the United States. Here is what you might not know. Not only is Virginia a good place for business in general, it is a good place for advanced energy businesses – and workers – in particular. As shown by AEE’s new Virginia employment fact sheet, more than 100,000 people in the Commonwealth are employed in the industry. That is more people than are employed in every hospital across the Commonwealth, and over twice as many as work in Virginia’s real estate sector. And advanced energy employers say there are lots more Virginia jobs on the way this year.

In 2018, the advanced transportation sector saw both the largest increase and the fastest growth (34%) in the U.S advanced energy market. Leading this growth was revenue from plug-in Electric Vehicles (EVs), mainly comprised of the light-duty market. Just as important is the burgeoning market of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MD/HDVs), which include the likes of school buses, city transit buses, delivery trucks, and garbage trucks. Medium- and heavy-duty EV adoption is expected to increase globally, reaching over 5 million vehicles on the road by 2030. Some analysts predict that half of the world’s municipal bus fleet will be electric by 2025. Get ready for EVs to go big!

Last week, the Ohio General Assembly passed House Bill 6, a bill that provides customer-funded subsidies to uneconomic coal and nuclear power plants while gutting the state’s clean energy programs. HB 6 is the culmination of a five year assault on advanced energy in Ohio, which included two failed attempts to repeal the state’s Renewable Portfolio (RPS) and Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (EERS), a two-year freeze of those same standards, enactment of the most onerous wind siting restrictions in the nation, and more than two years of debate on how to bail out coal and nuclear plants that could not compete in the market. When Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill almost immediately, Ohio’s march to the past was complete, making the Buckeye State stand out among its Midwest neighbors, as well as states across the country, in going backward, rather than forward, in energy policy.

This is one in a series of excerpts from the Advanced Energy Now 2019 Market Report, prepared for AEE by Navigant Research.

Advanced Electricity Generation is now the second largest advanced energy segment globally, having been displaced as the biggest by Advanced Transportation in 2017. At $453 billion, Advanced Electricity Generation was down slightly in 2018. Global revenue has been largely flat for the past two years, dropping roughly $1 billion each year since 2016, but the total masks significant growth in solar and hydropower in 2017, nuclear power in 2018, and wind in both years. In the United States, Advanced Electricity Generation continues to be the second largest segment of the advanced energy market and is still growing strongly, up 8% in 2018, with revenue growth in wind and solar, while natural gas turbines held steady. Over the 2011-18 period, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for Advanced Electricity Generation revenue was -1% globally, while for U.S. revenue compound annual growth was 6%.