American Council on Renewable Energy
Kevin O’Rourke is VP of Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs at the American Council on Renewable Energy.
The American Council on Renewable Energy has a new report, Power Up PJM, on quantifying the economic benefits of renewable energy projects waiting to connect to the mid-Atlantic power grid. That's important because ACORE is a not-for-profit broad-based advocacy coalition, focused on the need to expand, integrate, and modernize the north American high-voltage grid.
Since PJM proposed, and FERC approved last November, a set of procedural reforms to expedite approval of pending interconnection applications by first quarter 2026, and with an embargo on all new service requests until this four-year transition period has concluded, ACORE got to work. The result is this report, which finds if PJM's reforms work as promised, mid-Atlantic states could create over two hundred thousand four job-years and thirty-eight billion in capital investment.
There is much to unpack here, so PUF's Steve Mitnick got together with ACORE VP of Strategic Partnerships and Public Affairs Kevin O'Rourke. Listen in as they dig into the report's findings.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: You put together a report on one of the key industry issues. What is this report aiming to do? What are the major takeaways?
Kevin O'Rourke: What we're trying to do here is show the potential economic benefits for the thirteen states in the PJM region of effective implementation of PJM's interconnection queue reforms.