US Clean Energy Transition update - an improved policy landscape is emerging

In a welcome update to the historic narrative, renewables are now dominating the energy landscape in the U.S. And the clean energy transition can’t come soon enough, given the need for new energy assets in our country alongside scientists’ dire climate warnings.

As the CEO of a domestic renewable independent power producer, I know that the clean energy transition has and will continue to be driven by commercial execution from the private sector. Until recently, this transition has been happening in spite of a policy landscape that was built over a century to heavily favor fossil fuels and centralized generation. Oil and gas companies receive an estimated $10 to $50 Billion annually from the government, but the playing field is gradually being leveled by national and state policy initiatives, such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

To speed the clean energy transition, meet rising electricity demand, and create lasting jobs, we need to maintain and enhance an equitable playing field for clean energy infrastructure, and further rationalize the U.S. energy policy environment against our federal and state-level targets.

Solar and wind are the cheapest and most flexible energy sources.

Renewables are now the cheapest form of energy, and prices will keep falling. In the past solar and wind were considered intermittent or unreliable sources, but no longer. With the addition of batteries as a bankable technology source, we can develop assets to produce power on demand. Storage capacity is doubling every year, and battery prices are experiencing strong year over year decline.

Unlike traditional power plants, solar fields and wind farms coupled with standalone battery storage are highly flexible in design and siting. They can cover thousands of acres, or a single urban lot, with each application providing critical services to the grid. A diverse range of customers use these services, including utility customers purchasing capacity and balancing their load, EV fleet owners charging their vehicles, and low income households purchasing community energy from assets across their utility service territory.

Demand for clean energy is soaring, and we’re racing to keep up.

U.S. energy consumers and capital investors are choosing clean energy because it makes sense for them, and it’s the right choice for America going forward. We’ve seen electricity demand rising quickly across the country in unexpected ways, with long term projections showing that trend increasing. 

Traditional fossil fuel energy assets are aging out of their useful lives and will not be able to support the next data center buildouts and EV charging stations to meet our communities’ needs. We need other energy sources. Clean energy assets offer design lives of over 40 years, sustainable job creation, and energy production where and when we need it.  The clean energy sector already has over 3.3 million individuals working and represents approx 3% of new US jobs created year over year, and the infrastructure buildout is just getting started.

Our sector continues to attract surging interest from investors. Strong federal support has led to some $271 Billion in private investments in domestic clean energy projects and manufacturing facilities as of August 2023 — more than the combined investments from the previous eight years.

We need true energy equity for a sustainable future.

The private sector is doing all it can to accelerate the clean energy transition. We need federal and state-level policy certainty to keep up momentum to meet demand. 

What does a modern energy policy framework look like? Policymakers could do a few things. First, we need streamlined permitting for approved renewable energy assets, shortening the time to market for these critical assets

Second, expedited investment in the U.S. transmission and distribution grid would hasten the transition from a centralized energy economy to a distributed one. Clogged interconnection queues are delaying important projects’ access to the grid for five or more years. Private developers could step in to do the work, or utilities could build needed upgrades and rate-base the assets — but it needs to happen much faster.

Third, we need to protect critical Inflation Reduction Act policies, which involves educating the lawmakers as to the important distribution of these resources across the country which are reaching blue and red states in equally proportion.  Finally, as a nation we need to dramatically step up education efforts to grow the clean energy workforce.

Let’s keep clean energy’s tailwinds strong.

An updated policy framework will help developers, investors and consumers to enhance efforts in the build-out of the additional clean energy we need to meet demand.  Perpetual clean energy-generating assets across the U.S. are the way of the future and foundational to our economy. Enterprising Americans in the private sector are riding with strong tailwinds toward the clean energy transition and we need the partnership of policymakers to keep this key sector of the economy speeding forward. 

#cleantech #renewables #energy