Advanced Energy Perspectives

Setting out toward an advanced transportation future can feel like a mythic quest, given the array of investments, organizations, policies, and regulations required. Only a handful of states have truly embarked upon it, and none have reached the promised land yet. But a new entrant, Virginia, has embarked on that journey, and after a quick legislative session just ended, is making impressive headway.

A little less than a year ago, Virginia made history by passing the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) and becoming the first Southern state to establish a 100% clean energy standard. Today, the VCEA faces one of its first critical tests, as the State Corporation Commission (SCC) considers Dominion’s 2020 Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) filing – the utility’s first under the law’s new binding standard. Will the Commission find in favor of the utility, ruling only on the basis of the projects Dominion proposes to build and contract for? Or will the Commission consider the utility’s proposal within the broader context of the law, which pushes utilities to meet their RPS requirements through a variety of means to ensure lowest cost, as AEE and a number of other intervenors propose? It is our hope that the Commission will look at the forest, not just the trees – and set Dominion on the right clean-energy course for Virginia’s families and businesses.

This post was updated Feb. 17, 2021 at 6:31 PM to reflect updated action on another bill, HB2737, that intends to add duplicative ACC oversight. See last section.

Arizona Legislators have the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) in the crosshairs this legislative session with a series of bills aimed directly at stripping commission  authority. HB2248 and SB1175 revoke the authority of the ACC to adopt or enforce policy related to electrical generation resources made after June 30, 2020. The bills purport to clarify the constitutional authority of the commission to regulate utilities, in the process stripping the commission of its  authority to create and enforce energy policy. Indeed the real purpose of these bills seems to be squashing the 100% clean energy rules the ACC gave initial approval to last fall and are now in the process of finalizing.

Creation of a wholesale energy market in the West got a stamp of approval from Nevada last week when a legislative committee sent a letter to state officials urging them to support western regionalization – and citing AEE’s principles for doing so. “The West may meet its near-term clean energy policy targets” with current arrangements, committee chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno wrote. “However, to achieve long-term clean energy targets, western states and utilities must move towards even more flexible options and coordinated operations.”

For years, large companies in California have been calling for expansion of Direct Access (DA), California’s limited retail choice program for commercial and industrial customers. Retail choice allows customers to shop around, rather than relying on their local electric utility. It also allows large customers to meet sustainability commitments by procuring more renewable energy than the utility provides. Such corporate purchases have driven development of renewable energy in markets that allow retail competition, and for that reason AEE and the Advanced Energy Buyers Group have jointly supported the expansion of DA in California. That expansion could be coming, if recommendations contained in a California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) report on extending DA to all nonresidential customers are acted upon by the California Legislature. But the expansion is more likely to happen – and happen faster – if some misplaced worries in the CPUC report were put to rest.