As my colleague, Advanced Energy United President and CEO Heather O’Neill, noted in her opening remarks at our Leadership Forum held last week in Arlington, Virginia, “the future of advanced energy and America’s competitive edge depends on what we do now.”
It is with that sense of urgency and purpose that we kicked off two days of discussion and debate about how we, as industry leaders, develop the tools and strategies we need to grow our influence and impact across the country in the years ahead. I was delighted to serve as Master of Ceremonies during the event, welcoming our members for Day 1 for special strategy sessions, and welcoming additional industry leaders for Day 2 to see why being part of United means shaping our industry’s future. We were joined by industry leaders from solar, wind, storage, demand, and distributed energy companies, including everything from energy software developers to political strategists, from utility executives to utility regulators, all with insights into the challenges and opportunities for our industry to grow and deliver electrons and economic growth in states across the country.
The end of the year is a natural time to reflect on one’s progress and potential. This year was especially challenging at times for our industry, especially amid federal policy changes, and the overt hostility from the Administration continues to weigh heavily on many sectors of the advanced energy ecosystem. But there is also a lot of opportunity for market expansion for our industry, and it’s during trying times that we must come together to plot a path forward together to realize that potential.
United’s Playbook in Action
Earlier this year, we introduced our advocacy playbook to show policymakers how they can leverage a whole suite of advanced energy technologies and policy solutions as they tackle the three major energy trends today: rising demand, rising reliability threats, and rising costs. At our Leadership Forum, the playbook served as a foundation for our discussions, exploring how the industry should leverage the playbook’s major themes (Build It, Make it Flexible, Make it Affordable) to demonstrate how advanced energy solutions can make our grid more reliable, efficient, and affordable. We discussed:
- Which stakeholders should the industry engage to introduce the core playbook themes?
- How should we use the playbook to better educate policymakers about the options available to meet the major energy concerns of the moment?
- What other resources would bring these themes to life?
Energy affordability, a core theme of our playbook, emerged as a central topic in nearly every panel conversation we hosted. There is widespread recognition that political leaders need solutions to tackle this growing issue, but there remain a lot of misconceptions about how to deliver lower energy costs. Many in the room pointed to United’s strengths as a multi-technology trade association that has the resources and expertise to educate decisionmakers about the technologies and policies being deployed in states across the country as being key to ensuring more advanced energy has the opportunity to compete to provide lower costs and greater resiliency for households and customers.
For instance, in the panel discussion The Affordability Challenge: Regulatory Strategies for Cost-Effective Advanced Energy Deployment, participants said they greatly appreciated being able to tap into United’s knowledge base about how to create policies that unlock more customer savings through technology deployment. And in the political sphere, lobbyists and government affairs leaders talked about how the industry needs to be speaking directly to politically salient concerns, particularly affordability, heading into 2026.
What Is Next for United & Our Members
Our playbook resonated with the two winning candidates for Governor in 2025, and in 2026, we’re expanding our gubernatorial education program. As 36 states hold elections for Governor in 2026, United will be featuring the themes of the playbook in our engagement with candidates so they can better appreciate the menu of innovative and ready-to-deploy technologies at their fingertips to meet the energy challenges of rising demand, rising costs, and rising reliability threats.
Our product solutions may vary, but the industry is an ecosystem of technologies that are interconnected and work best when they all succeed. In this way, the advanced energy industry really is stronger when it works together.
Part of that strength is political. Complementing our education work, our political action committee, Advanced Energy Action, as well as our social advocacy arm, Counterspark, are expanding and providing industry leaders with avenues for making strategic investments in state elections that can have a profound impact on the relationships and coalitions we build.
United is strongest when companies like yours are actively involved and shape our work. I welcome you to learn more about the value we provide our members and see why many of the leading advanced energy companies – including but not limited to those that provide solar, wind, storage, demand, and distributed energy services – have joined United and see it as an indispensable part of their trade association portfolio. State policy development is a wealth of opportunity for our industry, and we’ll shape it with your support.
I’m coming away from our Forum energized and all the more confident in United’s ability to deliver value for our industry, and in our industry’s ability to meet the energy challenges of today and tomorrow.