Shaping system transformation.
Carl Imhoff manages the electricity systems research program at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash.
The electric infrastructure faces a unique combination of transformative technology advances and unusually strong policy and market changes. This confluence presents the U.S. with the opportunity to strategically define a future power system that offers significant value in terms of reliability, resilience and economic competitiveness within the context of our aspirations for clean and secure energy systems. However, institutional and policy innovations will be required to capture the full opportunity before us. To achieve this, all stakeholders will need to work together systematically to define the objectives and 20- to 50-year national outcomes necessary to guide this important transformation.