Presented to: EEI Energy Delivery Public Policy Executive Advisory Meeting

Background: Transmission Benefits and Planning

Reviewed effectiveness of transmission planning processes and extent to which economic benefits are considered

  • Many economic benefits are ignored or understated in traditional planning approaches
  • Planners and policy makers do not account for the potentially very high costs and risks of an insufficiently robust/flexible transmission grid
  • Interregional planning processes are largely ineffective and unable to identify valuable projects

Transmission's Role in Addressing Major Energy Policy Challenges

  • How does the region decarbonize?
    • Aggressive targets for the next 2 decades – actions need to begin now.
  • How does the country meet the evolving Renewable Portfolio Standards?
  • Do we need to agree on the "optimal" mix of supply and demand-side resources? If so, how?
  • How to work together to plan regional and inter-regional infrastructure?

Transmission Provides Answers to a Significant Portion of the Questions

  • To reliably gather and deliver new clean energy resources, transmission will be needed.
  • Transmission provides significant additional value:
    • Opens and expands future supply and demand-side choices
    • Mitigates the impact of extreme weather events
    • Reduces cost of generation
    • Reduces cost of integrating renewable energy
    • Reliability and sustainability

Key Barriers to More Effective Grid Planning

There are 3 key barriers to identifying and developing the most valuable transmission infrastructure investments:

  • Planners and policy makers do not consider the full range of benefits that transmission investments can provide and thus understate the expected value of such projects
  • Planners and policy makers do not account for the high costs and risks of an insufficiently robust and insufficiently flexible transmission infrastructure on electricity consumers and the risk-mitigation value of transmission investments to reduce costs under potential future stresses
  • Interregional planning processes are ineffective and are generally unable to identify valuable transmission investments that would benefit two or more regions.

These barriers exist across the country, including New England.

Additional challenges related to regional cost recovery and state-by-state permitting processes.

The Need for More Effective Grid Planning

If not addressed, barriers to effective regional and interregional transmission planning (faced nation-wide) will lead to:

  • Lost opportunities to identify and select alternative infrastructure solutions that are lower-cost or higher-value in the long term than the (mostly reliability-driven) projects proposed by planners.
  • An insufficiently robust and flexible grid that exposes customers and other market participants to higher costs and higher risk of price spikes.

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