A Potential New Paradigm of Shared Interests
Tom Sloan is a recently retired twelve-term veteran of the Kansas Legislature and member of several federal agency and professional legislator organizations’ energy committees.
Ronald Lehr consults on energy regulation and business matters. Current assignments include foundation-funded work related to utility financial transition from fossil to clean energy, increasing use of clean energy in electric systems, and new utility business models and regulatory reforms. He served seven years, 1984 to 1991, as Chair and Commissioner of the Colorado PUC.
Ron Binz is a principal at Public Policy Consulting, specializing in energy economics and policy, with numerous domestic and international clients. Over a forty-year career, Ron has written, spoken, and testified on energy policy and regulation. From 2007 to 2011, Ron Chaired the Colorado PUC.
With a new Federal Administration taking office, policy discussions over generation choices will be more prominent and potentially contentious. While utility executives focus on shareholder returns and debt coverage mainly due to generation investments, they also must concern themselves with system reliability, resiliency, energy costs to consumer classes, transmission and distribution system needs, employee costs, and more. Vocal environmental protection advocates generally focus on climate change and public health issues.
The seeming disconnection between the interests of those two parties results in political and legal conflicts that concentrate on generation choices. Real obstacles to developing a shared perspective included: different learning curves about how easily variable renewable generation integration on grid and distribution systems could be achieved; cost of energy to consumers versus potential environmental benefits; political and regulatory limitations; potential for uneconomic plants to become stranded assets; and regional transmission and balancing area operators about reliable system operations.
Twenty years ago, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) predicted at a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) that wind generated energy costs would be comparable to coal, natural gas, and nuclear generation within fifteen years.