Retrofitting existing power lines with advanced conductors (aka reconductoring) is a ready-to-deploy technology that can help new clean energy projects come online. Stringing advanced conductors on existing transmission towers expands the grid without needing to secure new rights of way and can free up clean energy projects stuck waiting to connect.

Electricity demand is spiking due to data centers, a manufacturing boom, and electrification. This is good news – federal policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and CHIPS Act are working as intended to drive sustained economic growth…

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed “111 rules” restricting greenhouse gas emissions have sparked debate about whether they will create consequences that threaten grid reliability. New Energy Innovation research details the potential impacts of the EPA rules, investigates their effects on the electricity system, and evaluates potential changes in reliability. We find utilities have ample existing tools to comply with the rules and maintain system reliability.

New hydrogen production could increase consumer electricity prices unless the U.S. Treasury Department implements three pillars of additionality, deliverability, and hourly matching in its 45V hydrogen production tax credit guidelines .

Clean energy costs have fallen so fast over the past decade that they’re now the cheapest sources of new electricity generation. But that trend has reversed and clean energy costs have modestly risen– is it a blip or a sign of things to come? New Energy Innovation research shows the factors driving clean energy cost increases are mostly cyclical and temporary.

Because of significant reductions in the cost of clean energy, economics are no longer the prime barrier to expanding clean energy: Solar, onshore and offshore wind, and battery power now cost the same or even less than fossil fuels. But significant non-financial barriers to wider deployment remain. Clean energy deployment is rife with uncertainties, most of them unnecessary. These uncertainties are constraining clean energy deployment right when it should be accelerating.

The 2035 3.0 report shows that the United States has one of the world’s best offshore wind potentials, enough to power up to 5 percent in 2035 and 25 percent of America’s total power needs in 2050 with this abundant clean energy. Progress in the next decade is critical to build out the U.S. offshore wind supply chain. With the right mix of policies that start today, we can make offshore wind a cornerstone of the transition to a zero emission economy, creating jobs, improving grid reliability, and keeping electricity affordable.

The 2035 3.0 report shows that the United States has one of the world’s best offshore wind potentials, enough to power up to 5 percent in 2035 and 25 percent of America’s total power needs in 2050 with this abundant clean energy. Progress in the next decade is critical to build out the U.S. offshore wind supply chain. With the right mix of policies that start today, we can make offshore wind a cornerstone of the transition to a zero emission economy, creating jobs, improving grid reliability, and keeping electricity affordable.

This paper lays out principles for an “electricity markets cascade” that efficiently recruits capital for electric sector investment to deliver on investor expectations of risk and return while meeting customer and policymaker expectations for a least-cost, clean, and reliable grid. It also proposes a new “Organized Long-Term Market,” which empowers organized markets to recruit and optimize clean energy resource portfolios and combines them into easily traded long-term energy delivery contracts.

This research report examines the causes and consequences of the widespread Texas “Big Freeze” power outages, finding that ERCOT’s market design failed to prepare the state for such a crisis and to acceptably manage the crisis, and identifying lessons learned for policymakers in Texas and elsewhere to prevent future crises.

This brief explores the role of resource adequacy in the clean energy transformation: How the clean power transformation challenges grid resource adequacy planning and management paradigms, how fossil fuel incumbents exploit resource adequacy challenges to electric grid reliability, and why changing perception about resource adequacy must be a top priority for climate mitigation.

This report outlines policy recommendations for Congress, federal departments and agencies, national laboratories, governors and state legislators, public utility commissions, and wholesale electricity markets to reach 90 percent clean electricity by 2035 in the United States.

When utilities procure generation through non-ideal processes biased against clean energy, they result in portfolios with higher consumer costs and carbon emissions. This report outlines how “all-source” procurement allows technologies to fairly compete to meet utility needs, reducing costs and emissions, with detailed case studies from recent utility procurement processes.

Competitive wholesale electricity markets are at a turning point. These papers outline questions emerging about wholesale market reform and introduce two pathways for markets to evolve.

America’s electricity market operators are increasingly looking for ways to make their systems more flexible as more renewables, flexible demand resources, and energy storage come online. This report outlines which types of flexibility are needed for grid reliability, offers advice on how markets can ensure sufficient flexibility, and will help identify ways to manage the grid with a rapidly evolving mix of resources.

Restructured wholesale electricity markets serve stakeholders by providing three principal services: economically efficient real-time dispatch, incentives for resource adequacy and long-term cost recovery. Because at least two of these functions happened dynamically through market forces, future scenarios for clean, affordable…

An abundance of new technologies are now available to produce cleaner, cheaper electricity. But in order to take advantage of them, system operators must build a flexible electricity grid. This paper reviews the types of resources that can deliver grid flexibility and provides case studies and recommendations for how to incorporate flexibility into grid systems.

This whitepaper, written as part of America’s Power Plan, discusses investment opportunities to support upgrades to America’s aging grid system. Financing upgrades to the grid system requires policy, regulation, and market structures that 1) eliminate barriers to cost-effective financing by enabling long-term debt and equity financing, and 2) enable investors to realize the full value of the new assets they deploy, such as reduced emissions or increased reliability.

This paper discusses the potential role for Staircase Capabilities Markets as a pricing mechanism to tackle some of the major issues associated with load balancing as more variable sources are added to the grid. This involves long-term planning for investment certainty, as well as flexible, small volume requests for proposals to encourage capabilities experimentation. The paper includes a California case study, provides a list of systems that could effectively participate in the market mechanism, and discusses the conditions of transitioning toward a new energy paradigm.