Edison Electric Institute Newsroom

Powering Growth While Delivering Value to Customers

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 15:39:48 +0200

In this episode of Electric Perspectives, Hanna Grene, Microsoft’s Global Go to Market and Innovation Leader for Energy and Resources, joins EEI Chief Legal Officer Rachael Marsh. They discuss Microsoft’s Community-First AI Infrastructure initiative, how digital solutions can enhance the grid. They also explore how electric companies, technology providers, and communities can work together to ensure data center growth delivers benefits for the communities where they operate.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Rachel Marsh (RM): Earlier this year, Microsoft launched its community-first AI infrastructure initiative, and I attended the launch event here in DC. What prompted Microsoft to develop that framework and what community-first means in practice when it comes to AI infrastructure?

Hanna Grene (HG): Absolutely. I've spent my career in energy and so much about what I love in this space is that we're always balancing between the different goals of reliability, affordability, economic opportunity and, and the trust that we have with our communities and the value that we deliver to our communities. And so to me, the work that is happening right now in delivering more energy for AI and also more AI to unlock capabilities in energy is still at the crux of those continued opportunities and some of those continued concerns. What we know is that the AI era will require more energy infrastructure. But as I mentioned, it can also give the energy industry powerful new tools. And so what prompted our community-first AI infrastructure work is to step back and listen to our communities. I hope what you see in our 5 pillars of community-first AI infrastructure reflects what you're also hearing from your members and in their communities.

We started from a point of listening. What we've heard is that communities understand and value the benefits that digital infrastructure deliver in their backyards, specifically the ability to create jobs, the local investment that accrues values to local businesses, as well as tax benefits and tax resources in communities. But they're also asking reasonable and important questions, like: what will this mean for my electricity bill? What does it mean for local water resources? You know, how do we benefit as a community, not just from the tax base, but from this AI era that we're living through? And so it was that listening and those questions that really infused our approach to community-first AI infrastructure.

RM: What are those five pillars?

HG: We'll pay our way to ensure that data centers don't increase electricity prices, that we'll minimize our water use and replenish more water than we use. We actually have some really exciting advanced technology where we're doing much, much more closed-loop and entirely recycled data center systems. So there's been leaps and bounds of, I would say, evolution, and new capabilities in that space. Three, we'll create jobs for residents. We invest in local partnerships and do offer local training and path to skilled jobs, often working with local community colleges and trades programs. Four, we add to the local tax base, and we've seen in communities that, that we've worked with over time that this has been used to fund hospitals, schools, parks, libraries, and that's really a highly local conversation on their priorities.

And then five, this is an era where more and more AI skilling is becoming important across different sectors. And so we want to be a part of that local skilling, investing with schools, community colleges, and universities, but also offering skills training for businesses and local nonprofits. So those are our 5 pillars. And, you know, as I said, it came out of community listening, but also listening to EEI's members, because having been in this space a long time, I think of utilities as community organizations. And so we learned so much through our direct partnerships with utilities as well.

RM: I love that framing. Now I want to talk about some of your work and your forward-looking solutions that help enhance infrastructure. I understand Microsoft has collaborated with utilities to enhance grid infrastructure through something called digital twins. Could you unpack how digital twins work and how they can help deliver value to customers?

HG: Sure. And I'll take an even wider lens than just digital twins, but to try to put digital twins in a nutshell, when you think about the power grid, it is truly the world's most amazing and complex engineering feat. It’s not just the physical assets, but the geographic space that they embody, the workforce that's constantly working on them. It is a living, breathing machine. Interacting with the physics of the world around it.

And so when we talk about digital twins, you know, the most like layman's way to think about it is how do you take the massive amount of data that's in that big engineered system and happening in the dynamic world around that system, the weather, the temperature, the humidity, you know, where there's an outage because somebody's doing work, where you have a new subdivision coming online and take that big dynamic system and reflect it in a way that is digital using all of that real-time data, but to help you do planning, to help you make decisions about where you might build future infrastructure, to help inform things like predictive maintenance, to go out and repair or fix something like a transformer before you have an outage incident.

And so, it’s about how you take this tremendous amount of data that we throw off of our assets across every part of the value chain, and use that data to improve your decision-making with accuracy before you're in a moment of need.

RM: So a supercharged advanced form of modeling. And it sounds like it has both real-time moment-to-moment applications and then also longer-term applications. Can this deliver cost savings and efficiency for customers?

HG: Yes, and that's just scratching the surface. I get excited about grid use cases because I'm a bit of a grid nerd and because we're dealing with a level of complexity both in what we're building, I mean the absolute behemoth scale of the capital infrastructure plans that are happening across the industry right now to build infrastructure, to improve our infrastructure, to get new generation online, that's a tremendous AI opportunity.

The benefits that I see there are that we've done a lot of work in AI for permitting and helping take what can be a very manual and slow process to build environmental permitting documentation, and even to do the front-end engineering design work. So there's a lot of AI that can be applied to streamline permitting. One of our customers in that, Aloe Atomics, saved $80 million using AI for permitting instead of taking a traditional approach. So big cost savings as well as big, big time savings. And as I mentioned, the engineering and design work is not only about safety and accuracy, but repeatability and de-risking projects.

And then when I look into the grid itself, this system that we're building, we're building in more complexity as we go. AI's superpower is helping us manage that complexity without compromising on reliability. And so when we think about things like predictive maintenance, when we think about things like storm restoration and repair, it's about reliability. It's about workforce safety.

There's a ton of phenomenal work that's been done in helping our folks in the field have real-time, accurate information about the systems that they're working on that improve the safety and the productivity of our workforce. You know, do you need to do two truck rolls to have the right piece of equipment at a site, or can we provide some of the backend AI insights so that the equipment order was placed at the right time to get you the right equipment to go to the site with the right information. It's money, it's time, it's safety, it's reliability, and it's keeping the lights on for our communities.

RM: Let's shift gears just a little bit. I have an 11-year-old daughter, and like a lot of parents, I think about the future workforce and what that's gonna look like. And of course, here at EEI, we think a lot about the energy workforce. How does AI change how we should think about our workforce, and particularly our workforce in energy?

HG: We have such an incredible workforce opportunity in energy right now. There are two things happening in parallel. The first is a lot of the skilled trades that we talked about. There is a tremendous opportunity for us as an industry, and we're coming together as we already are with our partners and utilities to hire more trades and to grow the skilled workforce because we need more. The retirement rates of folks rolling out of these jobs is very, very high.

We are in a large growth and build cycle as an industry, and so we do need more of a skilled workforce to jump in. We have customers that are seeing AI as an opportunity to help with that skilling and to help with that workforce growth. So you probably have a set of engineers who know everything about substation X, Y, and Z. AI can actually be a path to help more of your workforce as they come on board, skill up, learn, dive into operating manuals, access best practices.

And I want to be super clear that that's about enabling folks to come online and do skilled work faster and more safely. Nothing here is about removing a job. We need more. I always say that an energy workforce is a yes-and equation. I'm really not worried about job loss in our industry. The answer is yes, and, and so AI is a tool, I think, to helping us grow and scale up and skill up and onboard for this tremendous growth that we are all experiencing and ensure that people enter the field and enter these high-risk jobs with the resources and the safety that they need to be successful.

RM: Last question: How can electric companies, technology companies, organized labor, and communities best work together to make sure this growth moment creates real benefits for communities, families, my parents, like all of us out here in America?

HG: I want to spend one more minute on what I'm seeing in the future. And then I really want to spend some time on that community benefit because I'm personally very passionate about it. But, you know, as I think more and more about this future we're entering into, I do think AI fluency will matter. And I do think getting your hands on these tools and challenging ourselves to rethink how we use them and how they benefit my day and your day and your productivity, I think it's important. But what I've already seen firsthand is that critical thinking, data literacy, cybersecurity, and judgment are more important than ever because the human is staying and our energy employees and our energy workforce is staying at the center of all of this work. And so the value is not, you know, AI making choices for us. The value is the people in our workforce who know the system, who ask the right questions, and who apply their judgment using this very powerful tool to augment their capabilities.

And while we're in this moment of building quickly and innovating and managing an increasingly complex system and delivering at scale. We need those tools to superpower what we do. But the human judgment, the human operator is who stays at the center. And so when I think about the nervousness people might have about AI, that's clear to me. The creativity, the human judgment, the you knowing your industry, your operations, that stays at the center of our work.

It is so important that we come together to the community organizations, to the utility, to those that are building infrastructure, in that the stakeholders have a voice. And so this is what's so central to us in the community-first AI work that we've put out there. It's central to how we work with and partner with utilities. Each stakeholder holds a piece of that vision of what it's going to take to be most meaningful and most productive in their community. And so I do think it is that coming together of those with the stakes to provide that point of view. To make this a moment that is really successful for communities.

This was part of what it took to build the grid to begin with was this engagement with communities to build infrastructure. It's what it took to build our water utilities. It's what it took to build railroads. It's what it takes to build airports. And so to me, this is not fundamentally different than those large investments that power our economy every single day. But we can learn from what worked and what didn't in those different time periods. And the more that we, again, center those stakeholders in the conversation and ensure that the communities reap the upside of this tremendous investment, I think that's the real opportunity at our fingertips.

STEP at 20: Showing the Industry’s Strength Through Preparation

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 21:01:37 +0200

Mutual assistance has long been part of the electric power industry’s DNA.

As electric companies, our strength is collective, and our culture of continuous improvement means we are constantly looking to improve safety, reliability, and service to customers.

While our mutual assistance work is commonly associated with storm response, our companies support one another in several other areas, including physical and cybersecurity initiatives. Amid a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty, these collaborative resilience efforts are especially important today as our industry works to strengthen and safeguard America’s critical energy infrastructure.

Twenty years ago, we broadened our mutual assistance footprint by launching the Spare Transformer Equipment Program (STEP), ensuring we could coordinate and respond quickly following a direct attack on critical American infrastructure.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, changed so much for so many. As an industry central to the safety and security of the nation, we knew we needed to be part of the solution and, as we always do, have plans in place for worst-case scenarios.

In the years that followed the attacks, I was proud to be part of an industrywide effort to safeguard our grid against bad actors through the founding of STEP. The program provides participating companies with access to a large pool of hard-to-replace assets when, for example, a terrorist attack destroys a substation with large power transformers and causes a significant transmission outage. Members—consisting of investor-owned electric companies, public power utilities, and federal power marketing administrations—maintain a supply of spare transformers and other hard-to-replace assets that fellow members can readily access—and are required to share—in the event of an attack.

Unfortunately, electric companies know too well the long lead times associated with purchasing new transformers and new grid equipment in the event that existing assets are damaged—which is magnified during an attack or crisis event when every moment without power counts. STEP mitigates these lead times and helps ensure its members can respond quickly and efficiently.

Thankfully, in its 20 years, STEP has never seen a terrorist event cause a significant transmission outage. Even so, its members collaborate regularly and have used the STEP framework to support one another in other emergency situations. The continued strength of the program, and the robust, trusted community of industry peers that it has fostered, speaks to one of our superpowers as an industry: our commitment to preparation and collaboration.

We know that our companies and our industry power our customers’ lives and the broader U.S. economy. And, we know that, time and again, bad actors are targeting the grid to inflict maximum impact on the American people.

That means we must constantly remain on the front foot. What secures the grid and keeps our customers safe today will not remain static, and it is through programs like STEP that we plan and prepare for evolving threats to our grid and our national security.

I am proud that, 20 years after its founding, STEP remains a critical tool in our industry’s emergency response toolbox—a tool that, while we hope to never need it, is sharp and ready if we do.

Mike Innocenzo is Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Exelon and Interim President and CEO, PECO

Podcast: The Lineworkers Behind the Energy of Every Day

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 15:05:00 +0200

In recognition of National Lineworker Appreciation Day, EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney hosted a recent episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast, joined by lineworkers Greg McQuiggan and Ryan Murray of National Grid and Leland Overstreet of Alabama Power.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Drew Maloney (DM): How did each of you get started as a lineworker?

Ryan Murray (RM): I had some buddies who got in the field, and I took interest in it. They brought me aside and showed me some stuff. I always wanted to work outside, and I always had interest in electricity.

Greg McQuiggan (GM): I'm third generation. My grandfather was a line mechanic. My father was on the management side of things.

I played sports up until I was 23. And when I was done with that, my grandfather, when I was younger, said, "What are you going to do when you're older?" I said, "I'm going to play sports." He goes, "Yeah, when that doesn't work out, what are you going to do?"

We were standing in his backyard, he pointed up and he goes, "You ever think about working on those?" I didn't pay much attention to it. When sports ended, I signed up for the Southeast Lineman Training Center in Georgia. Went through the Georgia Line School, did a whole bunch of interviews, and, fortunately, ended up at National Grid. This has been my career since.

Previously, I had a bunch of odd jobs trying things out on my dad's side. I knew I couldn't do management stuff. I can't sit in an office. I can't sit still. When I got into other things outside, I really enjoyed it, and this has been an unbelievable profession at this point.

Leland Overstreet (LO): My dad, he worked at Ingles Markets. I think he worked there for 28 years. He just retired last year. He was an electrician. I always thought it was cool – rubbing your socks against a carpet and shocking yourself, you're like, "Hmm, how did that come about? "

At the same time, I thought it was a really good career. I like transmission more than distribution. I just like the bigger stuff. I've seen that they use more equipment and stuff like that.

It has been a really fulfilling job. I enjoy every day of it. When we get to use a dozer or a skid steer or something, mechanized equipment, I feel like a kid again. It's just living a dream.

DM: The culture of safety is so huge for all lineworkers. Leland, how do you keep yourself safe every day, and how do you train newer workers coming onboard?

LO: We follow our procedures and rules and stuff like that. Before we even get to a job site, or when we're at the job site, we'll have a job safety brief. Everybody will have an idea of what they're going to do for that day.

We'll just make sure we're safe, make sure we're just cautious about everything, and make sure, at the end of the day, we're having fun and just getting the work done.

DM: Greg and Ryan, you guys are out in the truck right now. You have a thunderstorm coming in. What does a normal day look like for you all?

GM: Ryan and I are fortunate to work together quite often. Our bosses put together a board with the job description of what we're doing on a specific day. We'll gather up with our crew. We'll go through the job jacket. We'll gather a plan and get material going for the morning.

From there, we'll meet at the job, where we go over a job brief, discuss our job, who's doing aerial work, who's doing groundwork, where our points of protection might be, how we're going to protect ourselves. Then, we'll just go through it. We usually break for lunch sometime around 12:00 or 12:30 and take about a half hour. Then we get back to it. Usually, we'll leave something easy for the end of the day.

RM: It's interesting with this job, because even though we report to the same place every day, every day is unique in its own way. Every job is a little bit different from the day before.

DM: And with storms coming in, you never know. You have to pre-position. You just don't know where you might end up that day, right?

GM: Right. Storms are actually my favorite part of the whole job. I love trouble. I love the storms. I love all that activity with that. That's where you really have to be dialed in, especially with the guys you work with.

The guy who trained me did a really good job always teaching me, do things consistently, do things always the same way, over and over. I'm trying to push that to Ryan as he's coming through, as well.

The storm situations are amazing. Like Ryan said, it could be different. I could go to a broken arm job, cross arm job, run off to go up, and replace something like that. Then the next call could be three sections of primary down, which requires switching to get customers restored before we can fix stuff.

It's actually a lot of fun. The hours start to get aggressive at times, and that's when you really start leaning on the guy you're working with to be a part of your day-to-day, make sure you guys are all on the same page.

DM: For Winter Storm Fern – the big snowstorm and ice storm that I know, Leland, you were involved with –America got to see mutual assistance in action. You had 65,000 line workers from 44 different states help work through that storm. Leland, how did you think about preparing for that storm, and what was involved?

LO: We knew it was icy. It's cold. So we just came up with a good game plan, made sure that we had all the equipment that we needed, because it's really dangerous dealing with winter storms, especially down here in Mobile. That's pretty rare. You have people on the highway slipping and sliding, and you’re trying to avoid them.

We just tried to just make sure we had all of our equipment, made sure that all of our men were pretty well aware and well-equipped for what they’re doing. This is an unusual phenomenon in Mobile, but we just got it done and followed our procedures and safety rules. And we got the lights back on.

DM: Greg, Ryan, I assume that's the same outside of Buffalo. You guys get crushed with snow and all kinds of different types of challenges up there. How often are you called in to help other utilities in the area? How often do you have to travel when you have a major storm challenge?

GM: That's a really cool perk of this job: You do end up in spots throughout New York State. The Northeast, for me, I would never normally go to otherwise. When I first started, I'd say the first 10 years of my career, I was fortunate to go to a bunch of great spots, different locations, and help different utilities. That was cool, because like Ryan said, every day is the same, but not every system's the same. We have different wire sizes, different styles of construction, different ways of doing things. And it's cool to learn as a line mechanic, to make your own style based on everything you can see by going and doing assistance. That's one of my favorite parts of the whole job.

DM: Leland, everything you all do depends on your partner and the rest of the crew. What makes a strong lineworker, team, and crew?

LO: Whenever I think of the team, I think of everyone doing their part. Everyone's in a good mood. Everyone just has a main purpose of getting a job done safely and wanting to come home safely. And it's good when you have a really good group of guys. Everybody understands each other all the time. You can obviously joke and stuff like that, but, at the same time, you can multitask and get the work done way more efficiently.

DM: Greg, Ryan, how do you think about teamwork in your crew?

RM: Communication is one of the biggest things about this job. You got to be able to ask a question and trust the guy, and you got to be able to maybe critique him if he's not doing things safely. At the end of the day, like Leland's spoken to, you want to go home safe. That's the No. 1 goal every day.

GM: It's important, too, that you get to know the guy you work with on a regular basis. I know Ryan's wife, I know his child. I know these things about him. He knows my wife. He knows my children. That gives you an added element of brotherhood and camaraderie, which is massive for me and him.

You can joke around and have a blast. But, at the same time, I can tell him when things go wrong or vice versa. "Hey man, I don't know what you're doing up there with that. What are you doing?" You have to end up having that relationship. That is so important to the everyday activity of this job.

DM: You mentioned brotherhood. You are all in your local IBEW union. How important is that brotherhood to what you all do?

LO: I think it's really important. I just know our IBEW down here in Mobile is really good. They just reached out to me, about two weeks ago, to discuss what's going on with the crew and stuff like that, making sure that everybody's good.

If there's anything that we need, or there’s something that we need to be representative for, they're there in a flash. It's good to have another group of guys that does the same thing that you do every day have your back and understand, knowing where you're coming from, when you get into certain situations.

RM: Yeah, it's cool to have that mutual respect, because, in some way, shape, or form, we all do the same work. Having each other's backs is super important. It helps you day-to-day. We spend so much time together, a lot of times more than with our own families. You have to be there for each other, and that's what it all boils down to.

DM: Leland, what advice would you give to someone interested in lineworking as a career and how impactful this could be to their future?

LO: Make sure you have a can-do attitude. Make sure you come in level-headed. You don’t have to be the other guy’s best friend, but come in and have a passion about what you do.

I like to see the younger guys under me. I'm only 23, but I know a few guys coming under me, and they're in line school like, "I'm having a blast." I'm like, "Well, it gets really fun after the fact, but at the same time, it's just really good."

GM: I'd say come in eyes wide open, ears wide open, and mouth partially shut. I don't mean that in a bad way. If you have a question, obviously ask. It's a harder industry. I'll never deny that, but you can learn a ton. There's some incredible human beings who do this job. It's extremely rewarding in terms of your day-to-day. You get to move, work your body.

And when you're doing those storms, man, watching the lights turn on after you just did incredible amounts of work is insane. I have an awesome story about Christmastime. I was working on Christmas Eve on a broken pole outage. Watching all the lights pop on around everyone's homes was just awesome.

It's an extremely rewarding career. It's physically demanding, for sure. Come ready to learn and work. It's an unbelievable career if you come in with the right mentality.

RM: Try and be better each day. Be better than you were yesterday. Never get complacent. That's one of the most dangerous things you can do here. You can learn from anyone.

DM: You raise a good point. I think we all take for granted that, when we go home and flip the light switch, it always comes on. You guys are the ones responsible for keeping those lights on, and, oftentimes, people don't appreciate all the work that goes into that. As we come up on National Lineworker Appreciation Day, what does appreciation from your communities and your customers mean to each of you personally?

LO: Like Ryan said, it's a really good feeling when the lights come on. It makes me feel good that I'm able to provide a service for my community and be a provider. It’s not like everyone can do this line of work. I'm more than willing to make the sacrifice for my community so they can do their day-to-day activities, they can go to school, go to work. It’s just a really good feeling.

GM: It is a job. I understand my life pushed me in this direction. That's why I'm here. Just remember – when you're sitting at home as a customer, and there’s a thunderstorm, and you're inside with your air conditioning running; or in the middle of winter, when there’s a blizzard and your heat's on and your stove's working and you can eat – that if your power does go out, and you see us or any line mechanic show up, we're probably in our 16th hour, our fourth or fifth day working, and we didn't purposefully decide to come to your house when we did. We aren't purposely delaying. We're working as safe and as fast as we can, so please have a good attitude towards us, because we probably haven't seen our families in four days.

RM: It is a good feeling. You see a lot of different stuff and talk to a lot of different people. I've had people bring us coffee and food, or younger kids will make a card for us, and that just kind of keeps you going during those long days.

DM: I often say to policymakers here in Washington that the most critical engine in America is the electrical grid. When the grid's not working, America's not working. You guys are at the heart of keeping this economy, the local communities, everything going. We really appreciate it and appreciate your time. We wish you all the best and look forward to celebrating National Lineworker Appreciation Day.

Alliant Energy and QTS: Powering Growth for Every Customer

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:51:14 +0200

Alliant Energy Chief Strategy Officer Raja Sundararajan and QTS Data Centers Executive Vice President of Government Relations Todd Malan recently joined EEI Chief Legal Officer Rachael Marsh on an episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast to discuss data centers, community engagement, and collaboration between electric companies and hyperscalers.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Rachael Marsh (RM): Raja, let’s kick off with you. What can you tell us about Alliant Energy’s work with QTS in Iowa? Why was this the right fit for your company and the communities you serve?

Raja Sundararajan (RS): Thanks, Rachael. We serve around a million electric customers and half-a-million gas customers in Iowa and Wisconsin. Our philosophy is to bring on large loads that create “win-win-wins” for our customers. When I say win-win-wins, that’s for existing customers, new customers, and the community that the large load serves.

As part of that, Alliant Energy took the proactive step of investing in land near areas of significant transmission capacity, which we call Big Cedar Industrial Park. That’s where the Cedar Rapids data center that QTS is building is located. This will be the largest economic development project in the history of Iowa.

While we have an obligation to serve, what makes this collaboration successful is the DNA and culture at QTS, where they lead with communities first and are flexible with respect to the timing and issues that require us to serve the large load that QTS has.

The QTS relationship has always been about making growth happen in a way that respects communities and is responsive. That’s the single largest differentiator that we saw with this effort. We have the largest economic development project in Iowa right now, and we have not faced any significant issues with respect to communities. That’s how they do business – effectively investing in large projects while addressing community issues. That speaks volumes of QTS culture and how they serve communities.

RM: Todd, you have many choices and options for where to locate a project. What makes a partner like Alliant Energy attractive?

Todd Malan (TM): QTS has been building data centers and data infrastructure for more than 25 years. We are in a new phase of data infrastructure, where you have these larger campuses for AI workloads.

At the same time, we have built a strong relationship with Alliant Energy. We have an energy partner and a utility partner that believes in the exact same things we do: core principles about how to build capacity and recognize communities. You have to be a good listener, and you need to be able to adjust to what a community’s priorities are. You need to be able to stand in the public square and answer questions and be transparent. That’s a hallmark of how Alliant Energy builds their energy infrastructure, so they have been a good match for how QTS wants to build data infrastructure.

At any given time, QTS has 40,000 contractors at a QTS site. We’re building six large-scale data center campuses in the United States, on top of the 75 that we own and operate now. We’re very aware that there are concerns in communities. It’s really about how you respond to that. That’s a hallmark of Alliant Energy and QTS.

In Cedar Rapids, the other ingredient is we had strong elected leadership in Mayor Tiffany O’Donnell, who sat down with us and said, “Great, you want to build a data center here? Here’s what’s important to Cedar Rapids. These are the things you have to do to be part of our community.” That’s exactly what we want.

Alliant Energy also did the work of finding the land and getting it zoned as industrial land. There was an easier pathway for us to do this in Cedar Rapids.

RM: Raja, when a developer like QTS comes to your service territory and makes such a long-term commitment, how does that affect your company’s long-term planning for the future for all customers?

RS: It obviously requires planning in terms of serving that large load. We have grid investments that need to be made. Fortunately, the land already had transmission access readily available. The biggest component was the generation needed to serve this large load. That’s where we took more of a long-term view. When you have this large load, that allows us to appropriately size the amount of generation. They're paying their fair share for both generation and transmission investments, but, on the other hand, we want to make sure they’re actually providing benefit to existing customers.

That's the key ingredient. We are trying to navigate not just paying their fair share, but also how that can protect existing customers.

We were able to navigate and achieve a five-year “stay out,” or rate freeze. That’s unique, and that’s enabled by the large load that's coming in and providing benefits. That’s the biggest change that you can see, where utilities are navigating these win-win-win scenarios. We are not only trying to make sure that the existing customers are seeing lesser rate increases, but actually, in fact, in our case, no rate increase for five years."

If the large load leaves after 15 or 30 years, that generation can be used to displace other, existing generation assets that would be getting old and would be retired. There are a multitude of benefits that these customers bring in, and that allows us to do more holistic long-term planning.

TM: I’d add that this is a complex area, with some complicated economics in terms of planning, in terms of what would otherwise have been borne by customers in terms of improving infrastructure in the region.

If a large load customer can come in and take down the lion’s share of that cost, what it does is help stabilize rates for all the other customers in that area. That's a fairly complex thing to explain. What I love about what Raja and Alliant Energy President and CEO Lisa Barton were able to do is that, when we made the announcement of this data center, they had a very simple message for customers: These data center investments are going to allow us to keep your rates flat for five years. That was an on-the-record statement right out of the box, and it was a simple reassurance to people. Your rates aren't going up because QTS is here.

There’s an old saying in politics: “If you're explaining, you're losing.” I like how Alliant Energy was able to just cut to the chase and say, "We're guaranteeing your rates won't go up for five years."

RM: I understand Energy Secretary Chris Wright visited to discuss the project and highlight the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which sounds aligned with everything you all have described. Todd, tell us more about the Ratepayer Protection Pledge and how it connects to your work.

TM: We think that the Ratepayer Protection Pledge is really an important assurance to individual ratepayers that are worried about affordability and energy cost – and rightly so. This historic investment in data infrastructure that we all need for our everyday lives.

By the way, this isn't just for AI. It's for if you use MyChart to schedule your kids' pediatrician appointment, if you are working with your kids' teachers online – that is all running through a data center.

The Ratepayer Protection Pledge is an important way for utilities, the large load data infrastructure, and AI companies to reassure people that we are going to pay for our own additions to energy infrastructure. In fact, we will be picking up the tab that would've normally gone to the other customers.

You're seeing quite a few governors who are putting out guidelines that are saying, “If you're going to build infrastructure in our state, you're going to meet these requirements.” That means transparency about water, or you're going to do a community benefit agreement. And I think that's really healthy – to actually have these elected officials who have to represent their constituents going out there and saying, “Yes, we need this. Yes, we have to stay ahead of China in terms of energy infrastructure and the creation and use of AI, but if you're going to do this in my state, you're going to meet these minimum requirements.”

The Ratepayer Protection Pledge and these other sort of standards and guidelines are important ways for people that have legitimate concerns to feel like they're heard and somebody is doing something about it.

RM: Raja, tell us more about how Alliant Energy structured its agreements to ensure the right balance of protecting reliability and affordability for existing customers while moving with speed to serve QTS and other large loads.

RS: Back in 2023, we were already having conversations with QTS and the Googles of the world that we serve in Cedar Rapids. We told regulators, “If you approve us working with these large loads and serving in a more efficient manner, that will effectively enable us to freeze rates for five years.” That’s what started off this conversation. It was very open and transparent. We showed various forecasting scenarios – what it would mean to bring in 500 megawatts to a gigawatt.

As part of that rate review, we created the ability for agreements to be made with large load customers, in our case, where the commission approves within 90 days. That addresses the speed-to-market issue. As part of the filing, we show revenues coming from large loads more than cover the incremental cost to serve large loads.

You need to effectively make a demonstration to not only our commission, but other key stakeholders like consumer advocates and industrial groups, to show the marginal revenues coming from this customer far exceed the marginal cost to serve them.

We have promised that we will not file a rate case until the end of the decade. To the extent we’re successful with additional opportunities, we might be able to extend our rate freeze. It’s a great way to showcase a win-win-win.

RM: Let’s shift gears: We’ve talked about affordability, but we’re also hearing about the speed part of the equation from data centers. Raja, how do you align that desire to bring projects online quickly given that we’re talking about long-lead-time infrastructure projects?

RS: Speed-to-market is the name of the game, and we have to address customers’ needs. What we have done historically is that developers purchase land in a favorable location to build a data center. Then, they come to us and say, “What will it take to power this data center?”

We have a great relationship with ITC Holdings. ITC has built a lot of transmission over the last decade or so that has enabled us to tap into existing transmission capacity across our footprint. There are pockets where it requires a not-significant transmission upgrade to enable a large load. We direct hyperscalers and developers to these locations to address speed-to-market.

On the generation side, we say, “Can you live with non-firm conditions? Can you live with the ability to curtail under critical times before a gas plant or other resource comes online?” That’s another shift in conversations, where developers and hyperscalers are OK with a bridge period. They’re OK with creative solutions to address speed-to-market. Utility infrastructure can take time to build.

This is where the collaboration and real-time conversation between the utility and developers like QTS effectively enables an objective to be met in a timely manner while making sure we don’t rush the development of generation that has community impacts. There are a lot of things you need to respect and address around public concerns and building generation.

That’s the conversation that allows us to navigate both the speed-to-market issues and the natural timelines of building utility-scale generation. This has been a great collaboration, and it’s a testament to the Cedar Rapids data center and the future data centers that we intend to build with QTS.

TM: There’s tension between speed and making sure you’re doing things the right way. It helps to have partners like Alliant Energy that have done a lot of the work. They’ve worked with the community.

It’s important for us to think about the contrast in China. One of the reasons China has been able to scale up their energy infrastructure and their data center infrastructure so fast, at such scale, is because they don’t have to follow the same rules. It’s basically government fiat that this data center is going to go in here.

RM: What is QTS doing to ensure communities benefit from these projects?

TM: We made a commitment to communities that's pretty holistic across the board. It's up on our website, so we're accountable for the principles that we've laid out there – and it starts with the ratepayer protection type of commitments around energy infrastructure and paying our own way and being transparent about that.

It extends to water and making sure people understand we are committed to using new technology we pioneered in 2018 that utilizes closed loop water systems. We take water into that system, use it, and it can go back into the municipal water system and be treated like any other input from an industrial operation. It’s not a net loss of water for the system in the region.

It extends to community benefit agreements, making sure we’re supporting communities based on listening to them and what they want and need. That may be different in Ohio than it is in Arizona. We’ve tried to learn from our 25-year history. In a lot of communities, QTS is thought of highly, as a good neighbor and a responsible part of the business community. We put a lot of resources and time and effort into listening and learning, taking action against what we’re hearing from the communities that we want to operate in.

RM: We’ve seen some communities really throw open the doors and welcome this infrastructure and investment. We’ve seen others with concerns about transparency, local impacts, energy use. What do you view as best practices for doing community engagement right?

RS: The first thing is to be open and transparent. We need to talk about what we are actually building. This era of non-disclosure agreements and agreements done in secrecy builds a lot of distrust in communities.

Any infrastructure that needs to be built requires a decent amount of public input and public involvement. We need to be open and transparent – and showcase that we have multiple projects to show what this means to a community. There are a lot of misconceptions out there.

We have to be much more proactive and open and transparent in terms of what projects are and how they affect communities. Without that, you quickly lose trust within a community.

We are seeing the economic development benefits of this construction project in Cedar Rapids in real time. You’re talking about 8,000-plus construction workers. You’re talking about meaningful impact to communities, and these are not temporary jobs. A significant amount of permanent jobs are created, also. There are a lot of misconceptions out there that need to be openly promoted and debated. As long as the community makes an informed judgment knowing all the facts, we respect each community’s decisions. I think being open and transparent goes a long way.

TM: The key is starting off with a level of trust and being able and willing to stand in the public square and say, “Here’s who we are. These are our values. This is how we operate. This is what we think could be built in your area that’s going to help society benefit from the tools of the digital economy.”

In Louisa County, Va., earlier this year, they announced that they’re lowering everybody’s property taxes because of data center tax payments in their county. Meta just announced a cool program around training in skilled trades for young people. There are a lot of strong examples around best practices that a lot of different companies are engaged in.

Big Ideas, Real Impacts: EEI 2026

Thu, 28 May 2026 11:44:00 +0200

Investor-owned electric companies power the lives of nearly 250 million people—nearly 3 in 4 Americans. Every day, they connect more than 3,200 new households and more than 200 new businesses to the grid. They account for 5 percent of U.S. GDP and power the other 95 percent.

It’s no surprise, then, that hundreds of electric company CEOs and senior executives, policymakers and regulators, and technology leaders and innovators traveled to Las Vegas in June for EEI 2026, the industry’s premier conference and thought leadership forum.

At a time when affordability, grid reliability, and rapidly rising demand are dominating policy debates in Washington and across the country, EEI 2026 convened a diverse mix of attendees and leaders to discuss how electric companies are powering the energy of every day while keeping electricity reliable and as affordable as possible.

Happenings in The Hub

From fireside chats to panel discussions and tech talks, The Hub was EEI’s center for networking and technology-driven content. Among the topics on the agenda this year:

Powering the Energy of Every Day: Sessions will cover how the industry is delivering customer value and innovating to meet demand growth.
Generation Landscape: Speakers will discuss America’s generation mix, the role of nuclear technologies, and the potential of virtual power plants.
Resilience and Reliability: Topics will include grid flexibility, balancing reliability and affordability, and lessons learned from storm seasons past.
AI+: AI technologies are driving energy demand while reshaping how electric companies serve customers and power the economy.
Grid-Enhancing Technologies: Panels will focus on innovations that are driving grid intelligence and making the most of existing infrastructure.

Congratulations to Duke Energy, Winners of the 2026 Edison Award!

EEI awarded Duke Energy with the 98th Edison Award for its DeBary Hydrogen Production and Storage System. Presented annually and selected by a panel of former energy industry executives, the Edison Award is the electric power industry’s highest honor. The award was presented in Las Vegas during EEI 2026, the institute’s annual conference and thought leadership forum.

“On behalf of EEI and our member companies, I am proud to congratulate Duke Energy for winning this year’s Edison Award,” said EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney. “By transforming Florida sunshine into stored, on-demand power, this hydrogen project is advancing what’s possible for clean energy storage and helping Duke Energy meet rapidly increasing energy demand while keeping customer costs as low as possible.”

Baltimore Gas & Electric and The AES Corporation were named finalists for the award.

Learn more about this year's winner and finalists.

EEI Data: Electric Companies to Invest $1.4T to Support Customers, Power Growth

Wed, 27 May 2026 17:05:51 +0200

Investor-owned electric companies will invest $1.4 trillion through 2030 to strengthen America’s energy infrastructure, increase grid resilience, and ensure reliable and affordable service to their nearly 250 million customers, according to a new capital expenditures projection released by EEI.

The data, primarily compiled from EEI member company announcements and financial statements, also shows that the industry’s annual capital expenditures hit a record $204.1 billion last year—a 14th-consecutive year of record-high investment. In 2026, capital expenditures are projected to jump 17 percent to $238.8 billion and continue climbing for the foreseeable future.

“America’s electric companies work every day to get more steel in the ground and electrons on the grid, improving reliability for customers and ensuring the United States is home to the industries, technologies, and jobs of tomorrow,” said EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney. “The grid is the most important engine in America, and these investments show our industry’s commitment to powering the U.S. economy and the lives of our customers.”

Independent studies, including recent analyses from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Charles River Associates, have found that rising energy demand can lower prices for customers by putting more electrons on the grid and spreading fixed costs across a broader base.

EEI maintains a running snapshot of $900 billion in data center and large-customer investments supported by member companies, representing more than 55 gigawatts of connected load. These investments are being supported with customers in mind, with tariffs and fair share agreements protecting American households from higher bills as a result of data centers. At the same time, these investments support reliability, resilience, and economic development opportunities in communities across the country.

The $1.4 trillion that investor-owned electric companies will invest in the grid between 2026 and 2030 is an increase from the previous projection of $1.1 trillion to be invested between 2025 and 2029. Rising energy demand driven by electrification, industrialization, the onshoring of manufacturing activity, and data centers and AI technologies are creating a need for new energy infrastructure of all kinds.

Review more of the industry’s latest financial statistics at eei.org/data.

EEI’s Drew Maloney Talks Grid Innovation, Affordability, Mutual Assistance on 'The Deciders' Podcast

Wed, 27 May 2026 16:03:13 +0200

On a new episode of The Deciders podcast, EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney joined Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Brody Mullins and veteran D.C. strategist Lisa Camooso Miller to discuss rising electricity demand, responsible data center growth, grid innovation, and challenges facing customers in the PJM Interconnection market.

The following is edited for length and clarity:

Brody Mullins (BM): Drew, your career has spanned Capitol Hill, the Treasury, private equity, and now the Edison Electric Institute. Tell us about your journey.

Drew Maloney (DM): I grew up talking about political issues with my family. My mom worked on Capitol Hill. She was a staffer. My parents were introduced on a blind date by Senator Chris Dodd. I had an uncle that worked for Hubert Humphrey's campaign.

We always talked politics, and I knew, at some point, I wanted to get involved in politics. After college, I went down to Williamsburg, Va., and I ran a state senate campaign. It was the best experience that I had. You had to learn to make quick decisions, drive a message, and build a coalition at 22 years old.

From there, I came to Capitol Hill and got to work for some great members. Senator Roger Wicker, who was in the House at the time. Congressman Tom DeLay. What I really learned from them is how to put together coalitions.

Congressman DeLay was the Whip at the time, and he would often have Congressman John Murtha, a big Democrat at the time, and Congressman John Dingle in his office. They were trying to figure out how they could piece things together—how they could get things passed. Watching how they maneuvered and counted votes was instrumental in figuring out how to be an advocate here in Washington.

That had a natural progression toward advocacy. I was fortunate enough to go into the U.S. Treasury during the tax reform process, and then I worked in private-equity advocacy and am now here at EEI, which is the top trade association for electric utilities in the country.

It’s been a great ride. I’ve had great experience, and I love doing what I do.

BM: You worked at the Treasury Department during the first Trump Administration, and you mentioned the tax reform bill. Tell us about that journey.

DM: Looking back at 2017, you had Speaker Paul Ryan, who had probably started to think about tax reform when he was in kindergarten. You had Representative Kevin Brady, and then you had the Senate and Senator Mitch McConnell.

For 30 years, we hadn't had tax reform. You had to go back to 1986 before there was major tax reform. There was a lot of work that went into the thought process around tax reform coming into 2016-17.

You finally had in the White House a willing partner, a businessman who had been elected who understood the importance of tax reform and the economic growth that it can provide. It was a fantastic time to be part of something that was very unique. It really was a great partnership to have between House, Senate, and the White House.

Lisa Camooso Miller (LCM): Let’s talk more about your members, specifically, and what issues they’re focused on.

DM: EEI represents 63 different utilities. We have members in every state around the country, and we provide energy to 250 million Americans—75 percent of Americans get their electricity from us. There’s enormous growth, and we are there to meet that growth. That’s why we’re investing. We’re providing reliable and affordable energy.

This is an inflection point right now for the industry.

BM: Two of your biggest members recently announced a merger: NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy. Why is there consolidation in the industry right now?

DM: It's all about scale. In order to be able affordability and build out the grid to provide um a resilient system—a reliable system—you need as many resources as you can as you can capture. That’s one of the goals of the merger: You get that scale, and the beneficiary will ultimately be the customer. You can capture that and put downward pressure on rates over the long term.

LCM: What would you say is the biggest misconception about the electric utilities?

DM: The biggest misconception is that we really are innovators. If you think about the grid, it was first built about 150 years ago. It's probably the most critical economic and national security engine that we have, but it takes a lot of investment to maintain. That's why you see us investing more than a trillion dollars over the next four years in building out the grid.

What people don't see is all the innovation and technology behind the grid. We're constantly putting out new technologies that can determine whether the grid can handle more capacity so it can deliver more power to people's houses.

If you go into one of our control centers, it's like a starship inside. You can see your entire grid and know what's happening in one town versus another. If you have cold weather here and warmer weather there, you can keep moving things around to make the system as efficient as possible. You probably couldn't do that 20 years ago. It's an amazing amount of investment to make the system work better and be more resilient, more reliable for our customers

We are making the customer experience better by including information in bills that lets you figure out that it’s better to run your washer and dryer at night, or it’s better to plug in your car at night, charge your phone at night, because the electricity rate is cheaper when people are using less electricity.

One of the things that's really been critical over time is, now that we have more severe storms, whether it’s winter storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, or wildfires, we are developing these sensor technologies that can tell us when a tree is getting too close to a wire that may trigger a fire.

We can reroute systems when a line goes down so we can provide power and go around the downed line. There's so many of these technologies and so much innovation in our industry that people don't see every day.

LCM: Affordability is one thing that both parties are talking about right now. What are some of the things your members are doing to address that particular issue?

DM: I think the challenge right now is that we’re in this affordability debate where people are struggling—whether it’s groceries, food, health care, or energy prices. Every company is dealing with this and addressing it with their customers. We have programs that help customers who can’t pay their bills, that can stretch out payments. Every single company is wrestling with this issue.

But I think what we have to do is keep reminding people of the value that we provide. If you think about your home, there are about 21 connected devices right now—your smartphones, your computers, your televisions—and on top of that, there are probably another 75 things that get plugged in… your hair dryer, your water heater, your electric toothbrush. All of this requires power. What our job during this time period is to remind people of that value—that for basically the cost of a box of cereal every day, all of those devices work. And that’s really an incredible feat.

LCM: Tell us about Energy of Every Day. What’s the message? What’s the goal of the campaign?

DM: We started this campaign about six months ago. The idea is to remind people of the value of what we provide. There's so much that happens in your daily life, from when you wake up to when you go to work to when you come home, that electricity drives.

You think about how transformational this has been over time. Thomas Edison builds his first power station in lower Manhattan to power Wall Street 150 years ago. Today, we have this enormous grid, this grid that's powering economic activity throughout the world. It's an amazing story, and that's what the Energy of Every Day campaign is telling. It's reminding them that everything they do in their lives is powered by us, and we do it as reliably and affordably as possible.

BM: We’re coming up on EEI 2026. Tell us about it.

DM: This is the leading conference for electricity leadership throughout the United States. We're going to have leaders of our companies in Las Vegas, along with leaders of tech companies, our partnerships, and government officials. It's a great opportunity to highlight some of these innovative technologies that we're using that are making the grid more reliable, safer, and keeping costs down—it's really the place to be if you're in electricity.

BM: There's a feeling that AI and data centers are really going to drive up demand for electricity and therefore increase customer bills. Is that true?

DM: It's not. A group called E3 put out a study that highlights the fact that data centers are not driving up costs. It's another one of these inflection points in the U.S. that, if you do this right, data centers can actually put downward pressure on rates.

There have been 23 states that have these large load agreements right now. If you look at those states and what happens after these data centers have been announced, you've had rate freezes in Alabama and Georgia. You've had cost reductions in Louisiana, Indiana, and Michigan. All of these states announcing these future data centers are going to see some downward pressure on their rate.

BM: And is that because the companies are paying back into the system? Where does the downward pressure come from?

DM: It's like if you have a bus, and the bus costs $100. If you have 10 people on that bus, it's $10 a person. But if you add 10 more people on that bus, it's suddenly $5 a person. The grid is a fixed-cost system. When you add a large payer on that system, it helps drive cost down for everyone on the system. It also allows for more investment so the system becomes more reliable over time.

LCM: You mentioned AI data centers. That’s a hot topic. What about these discussions do you think is misleading?

DM: If you take a step back on data centers, we currently have over 4,000 data centers in the U.S. already operating. So much of our daily life involves data centers that we don’t see—online shopping, posting memes on the internet, online banking, health records.

All these activities happen in AI data centers. I think it’s overcoming that natural aversion to data centers. What we have to do is talk about the benefits to customers and dispel the myths that electricity rates are going up because of data centers — because they’re not.

LCM: Who is paying for the new infrastructure to build and maintain the data centers?

DM: The data center companies are paying for it. It’s pure and simple. They’re bringing their own power by paying for that. They’re paying for the interconnection. They’re paying for the grid upgrades. That’s why you see most of this regulated at the state level.

You’ve seen these 23 states and another handful of states pending these large-load agreements which require these data centers to pay their fair share. There’s no free ride that they’re getting. That’s a big myth. You also can’t engage early enough. I think one of the challenges we’re seeing is you have to be transparent about what you’re doing as an AI data center in a community, and you have to engage early.

We've had a history of more than 100 years in most of these communities providing power. We know what it takes to have that customer relationship, and they need to do that as well. They can partner with us in a lot of cases.

BM: Does permitting reform have a chance of passing this year?

DM: It’s the one issue Congress can actually work on that can affect the affordability debate. It takes up to a decade or longer to build transmission lines or generation facilities because of the permitting process. You’ve got to get multiple permits from multiple agencies. The agencies don’t talk to each other. This is an opportunity to fix that.

And the cost of that delay can be up to 25 percent of a project. If Congress wants to do something about affordability with electricity prices, this is a great first step.

I’m really optimistic. I’ve been here about 30 years. I have never seen an effort so focused on trying to get permitting reform done. The number of groups, the resources being put into this, the bipartisan energy trying to get this done—I’m optimistic.

Whether it gets done between now and November or now and December, I don’t know. But I feel like now is the time to do it. There’s a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle and a recognition that we do have to do something.

It’s been too long and these regulations have become too burdensome.

LCM: When you think about regulators and how they plan for short-term and long-term, how do regulators and electric utilities balance investment in long-term infrastructure versus near-term need?

DM: The good news with the utility industry is we plan over a 30- to 50-year process.

We build power plants, transmission lines, distribution systems meant to last 30 to 50 years.

That means we can spread the cost out over that amount of time, which is really better for the customer over the long term.

BM: Charles River Associates recently did a study on your industry. What did they conclude?

DM: They highlighted the fact that data centers are not driving cost for customers.

They also highlighted that about 34 states have kept their average electricity rates below the national average. The whole debate on electricity cost is different region by region. The Southeast has maintained lower rates. California has had higher rates largely because of wildfire mitigation. They’ve had to bury lines and do more to protect wires against fires. That costs money and is ultimately borne by the customer.

In PJM and the New England area, there’s just a lack of generation. It’s a deregulated market, and in a high-growth time period when you can’t control the generation build, the customer is suffering in those marketplaces.

BM: You mentioned deregulation. It sounds like after 20 years they’ve learned some things in the Northeast. Talk about that.

DM: I think the problem is the deregulated market in PJM is broken, and customers are paying the price. The power generators—which can be 50 percent or more of your bill in these markets—are unregulated. That has to get fixed. The states have no real control over them, but they have control over us.

The people getting utility bills get them from us, but more than half of the bill in PJM is not imposed by us. Everyone—including the White House—has acknowledged that the PJM market is not working and that it has to get fixed. We need more steel in the ground. We don't really care who builds it. We'll build it. They can build it. But somebody needs to start building.

If nobody’s building, the generators are going to keep making more money and customers are going to keep paying.

BM: For my entire life Republicans have said deregulation is good and leads to lower prices. Now you’re saying, in this particular case, deregulation is bad and led to higher prices.

DM: I think this is a unique time period. We’re in a very high-growth period. You need a lot of planning, and in this deregulated marketplace it’s tough to match those up.

The generators will say they’re not getting a big enough price to build more. If you think about our obligation to serve, we have to provide power to everybody. That’s why it’s historically been a regulated business. You want everybody treated equally across the system.

If you leave it to a totally deregulated model, everybody flocks to urban areas and rural areas get left behind, because it costs more money to string a wire to fewer people. It’s a model that has worked for 150 years, and we’re very proud of it and committed to our customers.

LCM: You mentioned storm response earlier. Talk about that process and where you’re seeing the greatest impact.

DM: My first experience with a storm at EEI was Winter Storm Fern, which was a huge ice storm that started in Texas and worked its way across the Mid-Atlantic and ended up here with “snowcrete.”

It was a significant event that ended up having about a million homes out of power on Day 1. Ninety percent of those homes were back up within days.

What people don't understand about our industry is we have this huge mutual assistance program. Days before the storm, we get on calls with our government partners in Washington, in states and localities, and all of our other utilities in unaffected states. We mobilized 65,000 line workers from 44 states, working 24/7 in really tough conditions. If there's a line down in a particular county, we know and we send the crew out there. It’s an enormous collective effort where everybody shares.

Not only do they share line workers and personnel, but they share equipment. If you need a transformer in Alabama and there’s one sitting in Idaho, we’ll get it down there. It’s an amazing collective effort to keep the lights on.

LCM: It’s amazing. They’re these unsung heroes that nobody realizes. They’re traveling often from three or four states over to come in and get the line back up and running.

BM: You worked in the first Trump Administration. You worked in the transition going into his second term putting many officials in place. How would you describe your work with the Administration?

DM: We’ve worked very well with the Trump Administration on energy policy issues and find the working relationship to be good. Like a lot of things, you play the long game with any Administration.

We maintain a good working relationship. There are things we don’t always agree on, but, nonetheless, we keep pursuing what we want to do, which is provide more reliable and affordable power.

BM: What decision from the past year are you most proud of?

DM: Hiring a great team. We had a great team at EEI. We built an even stronger team and integrated that team to really deliver the results in this modern-day advocacy environment. That’s been my proudest moment.

BM: What’s one thing you’d like to do over?

DM: If you look back at the year, I was so focused on dealing with everything inside EEI.

I really want to spend next year going out in the field, visiting plant facilities, going to more operations, seeing the line workers and how they actually repair lines. That’s my next-year goal: to get out there and do more in the field and get out of the Washington bubble.

BM: What’s something people in Washington are not thinking about but should be?

DM: I think right now it’s a time period where you don’t have to swat at every fly.

You have to be very calculated in what you’re going to do and you have to play a longer game. Don’t get caught up in the emotion. There’s going to be a negative tweet by somebody. There’s going to be an op-ed you don’t like. There’s going to be a quote in a story you don’t like. But don’t overreact.

You have to have a long game. You have to stay focused and don’t get knocked off it. Most Americans are not paying attention to all the little tweets, op-eds, comments, and papers.

Stay focused on your long game.

EEI’s Drew Maloney Discusses Demand Growth, PJM Strain, and Grid Investment Needs

Tue, 19 May 2026 16:06:20 +0200

In a new interview on The Energy Gang podcast, EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney discussed rising electricity demand and the need for new generation, permitting reform, and responsible data center growth.

Listen to full episode here.

Managing Data Center Growth Responsibly:

“The goal is clear: we don’t want existing ratepayers to bear the burden of new data centers,” Maloney said. “When it’s done right, these investments can actually put downward pressure on rates.”

He pointed to the increasing number of large-load agreements and the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, designed to ensure data centers and other large customers pay their fair share and help reduce costs for local families and businesses.

Historic Electricity Demand and Grid Investment:

“When you look back at America’s history, the transformational infrastructure investments were railroads, the interstate highway system, and the electric grid,” Maloney said. “Today, we are once again investing in the most critical engine of our economy—the electric grid.”

“In the last two years, we’ve seen demand growth double, and it will likely continue,” he added. “At the end of the day we need more generation and more steel in the ground.”

Affordability and Reliability:

“Americans are feeling cost pressures across the board—food, health care, housing, and energy,” Maloney said.

He noted that electricity prices vary by region, but data show about 34 states have kept rates below average over the past five years.

“When Americans flip a light switch, turn on their heat or air conditioning, or plug in their phones, they expect it to work,” he said. “That’s our commitment—to deliver reliable and affordable power every day.”

PJM and the Need for New Generation:

Maloney also addressed ongoing challenges in the PJM Interconnection region, highlighting concerns about rising costs and a lack of new generation in the region.

“There’s bipartisan frustration—from FERC, the White House, and governors—because this is not sustainable,” he said.

Permitting Reform and Building Infrastructure Faster:

“We’re seeing momentum around solutions, including permitting reform, which is critical to getting projects built on time and at lower cost,” Maloney said.

“It can take a decade or longer to build transmission in the United States,” he added. “That delay can increase project costs significantly—and those costs are ultimately borne by customers.”

Convening Energy and Technology Leaders at EEI 2026 in Las Vegas (June 2-4):

“At EEI 2026 in Las Vegas, we’ll bring together one of the largest gatherings of electricity experts and thought leaders,” Maloney said. “We’re looking forward to hearing from leaders across the energy and technology sectors as we work together to power America’s future.”

Key Takeaways From House Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing on Permitting Transmission for Reliable, Affordable Power

Thu, 14 May 2026 16:30:59 +0200

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill put America’s transmission infrastructure front and center Wednesday during a House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing.

Policymakers and industry experts focused on permitting for, investing in, and upgrading one of the energy grid’s central pillars: the transmission network integral to moving electrons from power plants to homes, businesses, and government facilities across the country.

Southern Company Senior Vice President of System Planning Clay Rikard represented America’s investor-owned electric companies during the hearing.

Rikard stressed to lawmakers that “we are experiencing unprecedented load growth, and our electric utilities are moving with speed to provide power to our customers that is both reliable and affordable.”

Read on for highlights and key takeaways from Rikard and the other energy leaders testifying before the panel:

America’s Electric Companies are Protecting Customers Amid Data Center Buildouts

Transmission Is the Backbone of the Energy Grid

The Federal Government Has a Role to Play…

…But State- and Region-Specific Solutions Are Vital

The Regulated Business Model Puts Customers First

Federal Permitting Reform Is a Must

Podcast: Driving Grid Reliability and Innovation

Wed, 13 May 2026 11:48:17 +0200

In this episode of Electric Perspectives, Gregory A. Beard, director of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Energy Dominance Financing (EDF), discusses how the federal government is deploying historic levels of capital to strengthen the energy grid and support long-term reliability. Director Beard outlines EDF’s focus on lowering costs for customers while improving reliability and energy security, including major recent loans to electric companies and a rapid pace of capital deployment.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Electric Perspectives: How do you align EDF’s financing strategy with grid reliability, security, and customer affordability objectives?

Director Beard: In his first days in office, President Donald Trump declared that we have an energy crisis and an emergency. He chose Secretary Chris Wright to lead the Department of Energy because the policies that Secretary Wright is now deploying are making energy more affordable for the U.S., making the grid more reliable, helping us win AI, and that's giving us energy security—which is national security.

We are really the implementation arm inside EDF. We were appropriated under the Working Families Tax Cut Act—$200 billion to deploy into the market on projects that will, in every case, make energy more affordable for Americans and help bolster the grid, help us win AI, help us keep assets online that would otherwise be decommissioned.

We've already deployed about $60 billion since the Administration has started, so we're off to a fast start. I think we will invest the bulk of our capital even in the next 12 months. In every case, we are super focused on affordability. Every dollar will have that be part of the criteria for deployment.

Electric Perspectives: The recent $26.5-billion Southern Company deal was the largest loan that EDF has made to date. What are your goals as you continue this capital deployment?

Director Beard: Not only was the Southern Company loan the largest loan for EDF: It was the largest loan in U.S. history from the government to the private sector outside of a financial crisis. You can't overstate how seriously this Administration—President Trump and Secretary Wright—take this crisis.

We have hundreds of billions of dollars to deploy to help fix it. We've got about $75 billion left to lend to utilities to help with additional generation, to do reconductoring, to help keep assets online that would otherwise need to be decommissioned. And, we expect to have that capital deployed or committed over the next 12 months.

Electric Perspectives: How is DOE using its financing mechanism to support innovative grid technologies that otherwise may be too risky or cost-prohibitive to advance?

Director Beard: If you look at what's most beneficial to customers, to reconductor an asset or a transmission line might allow for more generation to be available on the grid without the expense of actually having to build new generation. We're very focused on technologies that really impact the rate payer affordability. Of course, we're a loan office. We're not a grant office. We don't want to take technology risk that would be viewed as what I would call “venture debt.”

In many cases, we're lending to in the utility space with customers that are investment grade. To the extent that they want to borrow from us to pursue new technologies while committing their investment-grade balance sheet as a supportive credit mechanism, we would be happy to support that. But, we can't—on a one-off, standalone basis—lend to technology ideas that aren't ready for deployment yet.

Electric Perspectives: So you’re looking at proven technologies, and even things like nuclear energy. How are you thinking about nuclear?

Director Beard: The President and Secretary Wright have been vocal about the need for the United States to be a leader in this space. We have the best capital markets in the world. I think we have the best entrepreneurs in the world focused on fixing this problem, which is why we've seen a lot of activity around capital raising and progress in the SMR space.

The technology that is here today that we want to support—and you'll see a lot of support for out of our office—is in the restart of the large-scale reactor program. We will do this through lending for long-lead-time items, as well as for support for the actual construction of these projects.

There are already more than 10 licensed sites in the United States where there are existing reactors licensed to add additional capacity. I think we will begin to see activity.

My suggestion for any potential interested party in this space would be to look at the support that these projects get in the form of investment tax credit (ITC). It's 30-percent to 50-percent ITC—which means, if you invest a dollar, you get 30-50 cents back. And, you don't get that back once it's complete, you can get it back even during construction.

We believe that the hyperscalers will be willing to lend their balance sheets through in the form of long-term power purchase agreements. We think that'll happen at prices that will make this program and these projects economic for equity investors, for the sponsoring utilities, and beneficial to ratepayers. This is a big push that we're embarking on now, and we think we'll have announcements in the coming months.

Electric Perspectives: It sounds like EDF is approaching this with an effort to de-risk some large-scale investments, making them more attractive for other long-term investors for these really big projects.

Director Beard: Absolutely. Obviously, the industry has said in the nuclear space that they're afraid of being alone. If you build just one copy of anything, it's going to be expensive. The reason why we're embarking on the restart of the program is to help drive those costs down, to make it more competitive with other energy generating technologies.

Electric Perspectives: What sort of timeline have you and your team been aiming for to review and get some of these funds out the door?

Director Beard: We're in a hurry. We cannot have an impact without deploying the capital, so take two potential borrowers. The projects that will have an impact, we will grade it.

The reality of the Southern Company projects is that those ratepayers are saving $7 billion over the life of that loan. Anything that will have a measurable impact, as soon as we can, we want to have involvement and get that capital out.

So, come to us with projects that are ready to go, where the capital can be invested in the next three years, where we can actually measure the impact for the ratepayer. We will be quick, and we will work at the pace of the borrower, which means we can have these loans committed in months—not years.

The last Administration averaged about 18 months from first interest to the closing of a conditional commitment. We aspire to get that down to under six months. We will work at the pace of the borrower, and we're, at this point, repeating many of the same sort of loan documents or using many of the same loan documents. This should not be months of negotiation to get to the finish line for these deals.

My advice for potential borrowers is to read the existing loan documents for the Southern Company deal, for example. And, to the extent that you can accept the terms and conditions that others have agreed to, it'll make the process much faster.

U.S. Reps. Bruce Westerman and Scott Peters on Permitting Reform and Wildfire Mitigation

Thu, 07 May 2026 10:46:55 +0200

Permitting reform, energy reliability, and wildfire mitigation are top priorities for Congress and America's electric companies.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Representative Scott Peters (D-CA) recently joined EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney for an episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast. The group discussed America’s energy landscape and the prospects for durable, bipartisan siting and permitting reform—including the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act (SPEED ACT) and changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Drew Maloney (DM): Permitting reform is a big topic for everyone. It takes China one or two years to build a transmission line or new generation, and it can take us in the United States more than a decade to do the same. Chairman Westerman, what can you share about the SPEED Act, your permitting reform efforts, and how important this issue is?

Bruce Westerman (BW): It takes a long time to build things here in America. We have things that we need to build in the energy sector, but also in transportation and infrastructure.

Permitting affects so many different parts of our lives. And, to most people, it's out of sight and out of mind—but it adds cost to things. There’s a way we can do this, keep our environmental standards not only in place, but have even higher environmental standards—and build things again.

That's what the SPEED Act's all about. I'm glad to be leading the charge on it—in the House, at least.

DM: Congressman Peters, you’ve been a big advocate for NEPA reform. Tell us about how this issue fits into the larger permitting reform discussion.

Scott Peters (SP): First, Bruce brought the SPEED Act really far. The thing I give him credit for is that he will listen to folks on the other side to see where we can bridge the gap, where we can bring as many people in as possible. In this context, if you want to get 60 votes in the Senate to get something done that’s durable, it’s got to be bipartisan.

The SPEED Act is a very aggressive reform of NEPA. I think it’s one we need now, and, speaking from an environmental perspective, I see that the market wants to bring on a lot of renewables. We’re looking at an environmental law that’s actually getting in the way of us building renewables. I don’t think that’s what it was intended to do.

Back in the 1970s, the idea was to stop bad things from happening, and NEPA was passed even before the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act provided substantive protections against the emissions of pollutants into the environment. Today, it’s the most-litigated environmental law. It creates a lot of delays.

Getting NEPA out of the way is really fundamental to environmental protection. It’s hard for folks to let go of it. Modernizing NEPA means building stuff faster. I think people, gradually, on the Democratic side, are starting to understand that, as well.

DM: Mr. Chairman, how optimistic are you that permitting reform can get done this year?

BW: I'm pretty bullish about it, and it really needs to happen this year. It needed to have happened years ago. There was an effort at the end of the last Congress to do some permitting reform, and it just wasn't ready for prime time. I think it's ready for prime time now.

Getting the SPEED Act out of the House was a good milestone. I know the Senate's working on it in a bipartisan fashion. I know the Administration wants permitting reform, and it would be a real shame if we don't deliver for the American people during this Congress.

I wish I had a crystal ball. A reporter asked me the other day if I thought the SPEED Act could ride on the Surface Transportation Bill, which is one of the rumors out there. I said, "I don't know, maybe the Surface Transportation Bill could ride on the SPEED Act, because I've actually got more confidence in the SPEED Act passing than the Surface Transportation Bill right now."

The good thing is there's so much interest in it. People are coming to Washington to talk to their members of Congress like I've never seen before on this issue.

DM: In my role at EEI, I've never seen an effort so involved in trying to get permitting reform done. When it takes you longer than a decade to build a transmission line or a generation facility, that's just unacceptable. Permitting delay costs add about 25 percent onto a project. We can't tolerate that.

BW: Energy is so important—so foundational to our economy—but it affects other things, too. In the reconciliation bill we passed last summer, there was $12 billion in there to upgrade control towers. The Secretary of Transportation told me their problem was they couldn't get through the NEPA reviews to get fiber-optic cables run to control towers. It's just stuff that's nonsensical. We need to put common sense back into the equation and let America build again.

DM: Congressman Peters, we're in this AI data center race while at the same time managing increased electrification, industrialization, and the reshoring of manufacturing activity. How important is permitting reform to those different areas and their connection to reliability and affordability?

SP: I agree with Bruce. This is something that has to happen this year. And we have got all the right players in place. We've got good products in the pipeline. And I heard all these same statistics about how delays cost people money, and every election I've seen has been about affordability. I think that's what people are concerned about. We need to get this done.

We have to do some work on the transmission side, too. To get a bill out of the Senate among Democrats, I think we're going to need some real transmission reforms, and we're having fits and starts in the House. We’re watching the Senate have conversations, and we had the Energy Permitting Reform Act. That was a great start.

It’s going kind of slow over here, but it’s got to happen this year.

DM: We totally agree on that. Chairman Westerman, in Arkansas, Entergy announced a Google data center project that will bring $1.1 billion in net benefits to customers. I know you're very focused on critical mineral production. Talk to us about the significance of that.

BW: We had a recent hearing in the Natural Resources Committee on copper—a whole congressional hearing on copper. It's amazing. Some people say we need to mine more copper between now and 2050 than we've mined in the history of the world. It's a global demand for copper.

Fortunately, we have a lot of copper in the ground here in the United States, but it's not helping us build transmission lines or electrical equipment if we can't get it out of the ground. Mining can take 20 or 30 years to get a permit, and we can't compete in the speed of the global economy if we're waiting 20 or 30 years to mine copper and all the other things that go into computers and electronics.

Arkansas is being pretty aggressive on building new generating power as it's needed—and on recruiting industry and recruiting data centers to the state. What people miss is that, if you're an electric company, a data center is your ideal customer. It's a big, consistent, heavy load that makes your generating equipment operate at a higher utilization rate, which means you can produce electricity at a lower cost for commercial and residential and industrial consumers.

And the data center can actually be a huge benefit to your grid operation and to your reliability and cost structure. I hope all the other states keep saying we don't want data centers and they all come to Arkansas and we're able to take advantage of the benefits of having them there.

DM: The states doing it right on data centers are seeing downward pressure on rates for their customers because of the point you just made. It's a fixed-cost system. If you have a large customer and the state has approved a large load tariff agreement, it's a big win for the grid in the state and the customers.

BW: The other part of that is the data companies are willing to pay for the investments if you need additional generating or transmission capacity. They're even saying they can set their data centers up so, if there's a peak load, they can throttle back their data center so you can meet the demands other places, which helps you even more on the grid.

SP: Right. There's a remarkable consensus that data centers should pay for their costs and assume their risk, because you don't want stranded assets and so forth. They have a lot of money that they're willing to invest. They're talking about how they can actually enhance the grid around a community, because it's in their interest to have that kind of reliability.

The other thing, in California, we notice is that a big part of our rates are the infrastructure that's been built. If you can serve a lot of energy, now you're spreading that cost along fewer and fewer units of energy. If you have more energy on there, more people paying, it actually could have a resulting benefit for customers.

DM: We're going to look back on this period and how we built a much more robust, more resilient grid based on all this data center investment. We're very excited about it. Switching topics, Chairman Westerman, you may be the only forester in Congress. What more needs to be done with forest management as it relates to wildfires?

BW: It's just a matter of doing the right thing. The way Scott and my relationship really started working together on legislation goes out to the Giant Sequoias that only grow in California. There was a two-year period when we lost 20 percent of those trees—the most iconic trees on the planet.

Trees are living history books, because you can go back and measure fire scars, you can count rings. When we had that two-year period, it goes back to the way these groves were being managed. After the gold rush in California, Native Americans quit burning, and we created federal agencies that put all the fires out. You had these slow-growing trees grow up in the understory that would have been taken out by fires that normally occurred every two or three years. They went 120 years without fires.

You had these white fur trees that got up in the lower crowns of the Sequoias. The fire came through, ran up the white fur—which we call it ladder fuel—got in the crown of the Sequoia, and wiped the whole grove out.

Poor Scott went on a CODEL, and I had him cornered on an airplane for hours, pulling out research papers, saying, “Look, this is what the researchers say is happening to the Giant Sequoias.” To his credit, he didn't just brush me off. The next thing you know, we're on a field trip out there looking at these burned up trees. We're working together on a bill called the Save Our Sequoias Act. And when I first got here in 2015, we could barely get any kind of forestry management bill passed out of the House. The Save Our Sequoias Act passed unanimously.

Then we went from there to the Fix Our Forest Act saying, "If this can work for the Sequoias, let's do it on a broad scale." Scott and I worked hours and hours together, and we came up with something we could both agree on.

I say this all the time: There's nothing we can do that's more proactive and better for the environment than to have a healthy forest. If we can't even keep our forest healthy, we've got problems. Our environmental laws aren't about protecting the environment when we can't keep our forests healthy. They're the lungs of the earth, as Teddy Roosevelt said. They're also the kidneys of the earth, because most of the drinking water in this country comes from water that falls on forested land.

I love Roosevelt's language. If you denude the landscape, you're taking everything off the landscape that holds the soil in place. You wash it into the streams, you kill fish, and you ruin our water. There's no downside to having a healthy forest, and that's what we're promoting with the Fix Our Forests Act.

SP: I had a guy from Arkansas who went to the Yale School of Forestry sit down and tell me about the Sequoias, which are my California Sequoias, right? No one from California had the expertise that Bruce had to save these trees. It was ironic, I think, that a lot of the pushback at the beginning came from the environmental communities that seemed more concerned to me at the time about not changing NEPA than they were about saving these iconic trees.

I think they were kind of embarrassed by their response to this, a lot of them, and have been much more constructive and have worked with Bruce and me on how to get this right.

We got overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in the House and this has passed and we're hoping the Senate takes it up soon, because I think it will have support in the Senate as well.

DM: The important thing that both of you all have highlighted is the fact that wildfires are not just a California or West Coast issue anymore. We're seeing wildfires in Georgia and Florida. This is a broader problem that we all need to figure out. How do we get the Fix Our Forests Act to the president's desk?

BW: It has two Democrat co-sponsors in the Senate. It's passed the Senate Agriculture Committee. If you take the two Democrat co-sponsors and the Democrats that voted for it in the Committee, it has the votes to pass the Senate. There's just a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and everybody's wanting to put their final mark on it.

It should have been passed long ago, but we work on it every day trying to get it across the finish line.

SP: I mean, I think the California electric bill is about a third wildfire management. San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) did a lot of innovation around meteorology. They found that there are a lot of reasons why things burn. The benefit to my constituents of the Fixed Our Forest Act, in addition to the general environmental benefits of preserving habitat in the forest, is that the federal government will be doing its part. It will be paying its share and won't be in the way of fixing the forest in California, which is costing so much on our utility bills. I don't think people understand that as well, but that's a really critical cost control thing for us on our electric bills in California.

DM: That’s why we believe it's so critical to get this passed this year and get it to the president's desk. Let me focus on one last point: We all talk about the political division in Washington, but you two are a great example of a partnership that works. You work together on permitting reform. You’re working together on wildfires. How does that partnership work? What lessons can be learned so we can have more of these types of partnerships in Washington?

SP: I like solving big problems. I thought there would be more of that here. I thought that would be the natural thing, but some people are only interested in politics, some people are interested in TV, and some people are scared of their own shadow.

What we've learned is, if you see a big problem, you can follow the facts, you can start with the right answer, and you can build the politics around that. We’ve touched a lot of what people thought were third rails on the left, and there's no third rails. People understand that to solve the problem, you come up with the right answer.

That has not hurt me electorally one bit. People like that I work with the other side. Bruce is conservative. I don't want any Arkansans to think he's some sort of left winger. The thing is, we can agree on this kind of stuff, and he's got expertise that I can use.

I think it's fun to solve big problems. I want these bills to get passed, and I will feel like I have made a contribution as part of my congressional career if we do.

BW: I would agree with what Scott said. I served in the Arkansas legislature for a couple of terms before I came to Congress, and my background is engineering and forestry. I always define an engineer as a glorified problem solver. That's what you learn in engineering schools: how to solve problems.

I'm with Scott. I didn't come here to complain about things or to go on TV and make some point. I want to actually solve problems to make the country better. The way you solve problems is you figure out what the problem is. They teach you in engineering school to find the problem or come up with a plan, do the math, and present the answer. That’s really what you do in Congress. What's the problem? Here's the plan to fix it. Do the work. That last part's the hard part: presenting it and getting people to accept it.

You have to have people that you can work in good faith with that want the same objective. Who wants to see our forest burn down? Deep down, we all want to fix that. Who wants to see it take forever to build things in America, and who wants to see us fall behind China in lots of different areas? I don't think there's many people that fall into that category.

[President Ronald] Reagan said, “If you can get 80 percent of what you want, if you can agree on 80 percent of what's in a bill, you've got a tremendous win.” We live in an instant-information society, where you can find some problem with any kind of solution that's out there, and it's a lot easier to make a lot of noise about what was in the 10 percent or 20 percent that you couldn't get from an idealistic standpoint than to talk about the 80 percent that you get.

5 Key Takeaways From House Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing on the Grid and AI

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 17:19:12 +0200

On Wednesday, the House Energy & Commerce Committee held a hearing about rising energy demand, serving data centers and large loads, and prioritizing affordability for customers.

Nelson Peeler, Duke Energy Senior Vice President for Grid Strategy, Planning, and Integration, stressed to lawmakers that “large new electricity customers, if integrated into the grid responsibly, present local economic development opportunities and can limit rate growth by spreading the fixed costs of the grid across a larger base.”

Watch a recording of the hearing, and see below for highlights and key takeaways:

1. The Regulated Business Model Benefits Customers.

Electric Perspectives:

2. Companies and Regulators Are Protecting Customers From Added Costs.

Electric Perspectives:

3. One-Size-Fits-All Data Center Solutions Are Unrealistic.

Electric Perspectives:

4. Grid Investment Will Be Critical to Meeting Demand.

Electric Perspectives:

5. Grid-Enhancing Technologies Are Making the Most of Existing Assets.

Electric Perspectives:

Electric Perspectives: What to Know About Data Centers From EEI-Axios Live

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:30:29 +0200

Data centers and AI were drivers of conversation during a recent EEI-Axios Live event featuring EEI Vice Chair Chris Womack, chairman, president, and CEO of Southern Company; White House National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC) Director Peter Lake; and Representatives Julie Fedorchak (R-N.D.) and Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.).

4 Takeaways:

1. Industry and Government Agree: Tech Companies Should Pay Their Fair Share.

Context: Electric companies and their government and regulatory partners are aligned on protecting residential customers by ensuring data centers and large loads pay for the infrastructure needed to meet their energy demand.

Many data center developers are also on board, particularly after the White House unveiled its Ratepayer Protection Pledge to ensure tech companies pay their fair share to access the grid.

EEI in March published a snapshot of the data center projects its members are engaged in, detailing 39 gigawatts of projects and $840 billion in investments. These projects are bringing economic development to communities across the country without raising customers’ bills.

Electric Perspectives:

2. Companies Are Protecting Customers.

Context: Twenty states have approved a large load tariff, charging higher, specialized rates to large load customers to ensure they fund the grid upgrades and infrastructure projects needed to meet their energy demand. Nine other states are actively considering them.

Two states where tariffs have been approved are Alabama and Georgia, where Southern Company has implemented multi-year rate freezes thanks to data center and large load development.

A recent report from Charles River Associates (CRA) found that—outside of the PJM region—data centers have not driven up residential rates.

Electric Perspectives:

3. Market Structure Matters.

Context: Vertically integrated companies that own their own generation are among the most closely regulated operations in the country, with rates and investments approved by public service commissions through open and transparent rate reviews.

Electric companies, state regulators, consumer advocates, local officials, customers, environmental groups, and other stakeholders have input on generation, transmission, and distribution decisions—which is beneficial when major investments like data centers are being considered.

Several speakers at the event noted the PJM region lacks vertical integration, exacerbating some of its recent challenges.

Electric Perspectives:

4. Companies Need to Communicate Customer Benefits.

Context: Although public sentiment on data centers is low, EEI members are leading projects that are bringing new jobs, tax revenues, energy infrastructure, and local investments to communities across the country without driving up customer bills.

Womack and Lake indicated there is no shortage of success stories nationally and that industry and government can do a better job communicating benefits directly with customers.

Electric Perspectives:

What’s Next:

Duke President and CEO Harry Sideris will feature in the next EEI-Axios Live event scheduled for September.
The CRA rate analysis has more information about data centers and customer impacts, detailed in a recent Electric Perspectives podcast episode.
A recent Lawrence Berkeley National Lab report indicated growing demand from data centers and businesses can help lower costs for states and communities.
Data centers and rising energy demand will be a key topic of conversation at EEI 2026, to be held June 2-4 at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas. Register today at eei.org/2026.

Axios Live: Strengthening the Grid for What's Next

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:31:43 +0200

The electric grid is the backbone of America’s daily life, enabling everything from economic activity and public safety to communication and innovation. Surging energy demand, extreme weather, emerging technologies, and electrification are impacting the grid and consumer power bills, making today’s decisions matter more than ever.

EEI joined Axios Live in April to host a series of conversations about the grid and the policy, planning, and investment decisions needed to improve and maintain a resilient grid for the decades ahead.

Scroll through for highlights from the event, and watch a full video recording above or at the Axios Live YouTube channel.

Purpose, Connection, and Mutual Respect

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:42:05 +0200

Electric Perspectives (EP): What are some of your proudest accomplishments from your 23 years at ITC Holdings and 32 years in the industry?

Linda Apsey (LA): One of my proudest accomplishments was making the decision to join ITC 23 years ago. ITC pioneered the independent transmission company model in the United States, emerging from the divestiture of transmission assets and growing into a leading owner and operator of high‑voltage electric infrastructure. At the time, making that move felt like a significant risk.

Still, I believed deeply in ITC’s vision and in what we were trying to build. I chose to take the risk, fully knowing that failure simply wasn’t an option. That decision not only shaped my career but also instilled a lasting sense of ownership and accountability.

That shared commitment became foundational to ITC’s culture, which is something I am incredibly proud of having had a part in creating.

EP: What are the biggest policy shifts that you have seen during your career?

LA: ITC was born out of one of the most significant policy shifts I’ve seen in my career from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). FERC Order No. 888 required utilities that owned transmission to provide open, non‑discriminatory access to their systems.

At the time, there was a view that vertically integrated utilities could favor their own generation by limiting transmission access. As a result, the policy encouraged functional—and, ultimately, structural—separation between generation and transmission. That shift set the stage for DTE Energy (formerly Detroit Edison) to divest its transmission assets and led to the creation of ITC.

With that singular focus on transmission, ITC had a unique perspective early on. From the beginning, we engaged in public and regulatory policy, helping shape conversations about what the future of transmission should look like. Regulators paid attention.

Many of the policies in place today around transmission planning, cost allocation, and investment incentives were informed by our early leadership and advocacy.

ITC President and CEO Linda Apsey testified before the Senate Budget Committee on July 31, 2023, highlighting the increasing need for infrastructure investment and the role policymakers can play in streamlining permitting and planning.

EP: How do we expand America’s transmission capacity to meet rising energy demand?

LA: Expanding America’s transmission capacity really starts with proactive, long‑term planning. We need to be honest about where demand is headed and make smart investments now in the infrastructure that will give us flexibility and efficiency in the future.

When we try to cut corners or delay those decisions, it doesn’t save money. It almost always pushes costs and constraints on customers down the road—and that’s not acceptable.

Policymakers, regulators, and industry leaders are increasingly recognizing that the best way to address affordability concerns is to invest in more generation and more transmission. That means modernizing the regulatory and permitting process so major transmission projects can move forward more efficiently with greater certainty and fewer delays.

Proactive planning, regulatory certainty, and sustained investment are how we build the grid of the future.

EP: How have you seen the industry’s focus on resilience evolve over the years?

LA: When ITC was first established, we acquired transmission assets that had seen little meaningful investment for 30 to 40 years. They required significant attention. Early on, we made a deliberate decision that if we were going to be a standalone, transmission‑only company, we needed to be exceptional at what we do.

Over decades of sustained investment and maintenance, we significantly improved the performance of those assets. Systems that were once third‑ or fourth‑quartile performers from a reliability standpoint have been transformed into top‑quartile— and, in many cases, top‑decile— performers today. That long‑term commitment to investment ultimately paid off when rebuilt portions of ITC’s 138‑kilovolt transmission lines in northern Michigan withstood the ice storm in spring 2025. The powerful winter system moved across much of northern and parts of south‑central Michigan, bringing severe ice accumulation and widespread outages, marking the most severe system damage in ITC Michigan’s history. Working around the clock, ITC, in coordination with distribution utilities and Michigan’s State Emergency Operations Center, repaired damage to impacted portions of the system. These restoration efforts were most recently recognized by EEI with a 2025 Emergency Response Award.

On December 16, 2023, ITC President and CEO Linda Apsey received an honorary Doctor of Business degree from Michigan State University, where she also delivered the Fall 2023 Commencement Address to graduating students across multiple colleges.

EP: Who or what has been a source of inspiration to you throughout your career?

LA: A major source of inspiration for me was ITC’s founder and first CEO, Joe Welch. Our paths first crossed at Detroit Edison, where he took me under his wing and became a mentor for much of my career. He was a visionary leader whose bold decisions and deep commitment to both the business and our people helped define ITC in its earliest days and shape the company it is today.

I was deeply saddened by his passing in the summer of 2025. Joe’s passion for the critical infrastructure we build and maintain, along with his unwavering focus on our employees, served as a constant guide when I stepped into the role of CEO in 2016. I remain grateful for the time we shared and for the belief he had in me.

EP: What can you say about the culture you've fostered at ITC Holdings Corp.?

LA: During my time at ITC, the thing I’m most proud of is the culture we’ve built, and, just as importantly, how intentional we’ve been about it. Culture doesn’t happen by accident. It takes focus, consistency, and a shared commitment to what really matters.

When I look at our values—being better together, driving value for those we serve, maintaining an unwavering commitment to safety, taking an enterprising approach, and leading with integrity and responsibility—I don’t see them as words on a wall. I see them as something that truly anchors who we are, both collectively as a company and individually. Those values guide how we show up every day, how we treat one another, and how we make decisions, especially as we look to the future.

History has also played an important role in shaping who we are. The elements that defined ITC in its early days like the grit, the sense of purpose, and the willingness to do things differently, are still very much a part of our identity today. We’ve held onto those foundational traits while continuing to evolve and I think that balance has been incredibly important.

One thing I’ve always cared deeply about is fostering a true culture of belonging. I want every employee to feel they can be successful and that they are supported along the way. We are invested in the employee experience, and, in return, our employees are invested in the company. That sense of shared success is incredibly powerful.

As I pass the baton to the next generation of leaders and employees, I hope they take all the best things we’ve created and build on them. If they can hold onto that “secret sauce”—the sense of purpose, connection, and mutual respect—I believe ITC will continue to be a place where people feel motivated, inspired, and proud of the work they do.

On October 14, 2016, ITC Holdings Corp. became a subsidiary of Fortis Inc., and Linda Apsey was named President and CEO, succeeding ITC founder and longtime leader Joe Welch.

Industry Celebrates Management-Organized Labor Partnership at National LAMPAC Conference

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:06:48 +0100

On March 16, leaders of EEI member companies and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) locals convened for the National Labor and Management Public Affairs Committee (LAMPAC) conference in Washington, D.C.

During the conference, officials explored challenges and new opportunities facing the energy industry and its workforce. They also discussed how policies and regulatory support can drive energy infrastructure buildout as electric companies work to meet rising demand and connect large load customers to the grid.

“The partnership between EEI and IBEW is essential to delivering reliable energy to the communities we serve across the nation,” said EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney during his opening remarks. “Ninety percent of EEI member companies’ organized labor are represented by the IBEW, and that partnership is foundational to our success.”

“What an amazing time to be in the industry,” said IBEW Director of the Utility Department and National LAMPAC Co-President Drew Stover. “The buildout and expansion of our infrastructure and workforce ahead of us is like nothing we have seen in decades.”

Powering Partnerships

The first panel, “Powering Leadership and Partnerships in the Industry,” highlighted the top priorities for America’s electric companies and their workforce and reinforced the value of a strong labor-management partnership. Maloney moderated a panel featured EEI Chair and Exelon President and CEO Calvin Butler; Ameren Corporation Chairman, President and CEO Marty Lyons; IBEW International President Kenny Cooper; and IBEW International Secretary-Treasurer Paul Noble.

When Butler was serving as president of Baltimore Gas and Electric, an Exelon subsidiary, he worked on union negotiations with Cooper, who was IBEW Vice President of the Fourth District at that time.

“We wanted the best for our employees, our company, and our communities. When you get through all the noise, that was at the core of what was driving us and has guided our relationship,” Butler said.

“It’s not how we agree that matters; it’s how we disagree,” Cooper said. “Most of the time, we find common ground.”

Lyons applauded IBEW workers’ efforts to help with recovery efforts after a major storm hit communities served by Ameren last year.

“The partnership we had with IBEW is fantastic. Last year, we had a tornado come through downtown St. Louis. When you saw the devastation this tornado left, it looked like a war zone,” Lyons said. “We had 3,000 folks come out to help with recovery. We deployed $100 million over the course of eight days. We got customers restored … at the end of the week, I was truly emotional seeing what our crews were able to do.”

“We’re better together,” Noble agreed, “and we can accomplish a lot more together than if we go alone.”

To learn more about National LAMPAC, visit its website.

2026 LAMPAC Awards

Each year, the John D. Dingell Award and the Edwin D. Hill Award are presented during the LAMPAC Award Ceremony. This year, EEI and the IBEW presented the first Edwin D. Hill Award to Ameren Missouri and IBEW Local 1439 for their partnership to advance economic development in the communities they serve. Learn more about Ameren Missouri and IBEW Local 949’s initiative.

The second Edwin D. Hill Award was presented to Alliant Energy, IBEW Local 949, and IBEW Local 204 for their work to educate voters about a proposed ballot initiative that jeopardized union jobs and energy reliability for customers. Learn more about Alliant Energy and IBEW Locals 949 and 204’s efforts.

The John D. Dingell Award was presented to Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jack Reed (D-RI) in recognition of their steadfast support for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). Learn more about Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Jack Reed's (D-RI) work to champion LIHEAP.

Scroll through the photo gallery below.

‘If the Grid Doesn’t Work, America Doesn’t Work’: Resilience Key Focus at NARUC Policy Summit

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:25:40 +0100

Left to right: NARUC President Ann Rendahl, NCTA President and CEO Cory Gardner, EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney, NRECA CEO Jim Matheson, American Water Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Cheryl Norton, AGA President and CEO Karen Harbert, Florida Commissioner Mike La Rosa.

Industry-government coordination was front and center during the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Winter Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., in early February.

Only two weeks on from Winter Storm Fern, a historic winter weather event that impacted more than 200 million Americans and prompted the largest mutual assistance activation the United States had seen since Superstorm Sandy, mutual assistance and storm response were fresh on the minds of the of state commissioners, federal officials, electric company leaders, and other stakeholders who attended the annual gathering.

“The effort and the coordination among federal, state, local officials, our members, working across the industry, was amazing,” EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney said during a panel discussion, highlighting the significance of pre-positioning crews and resources “days before the storm hit.”

More than 65,000 workers from America’s electric companies braved frigid and hazardous conditions to restore power to impacted communities. The scale of this effort required regular and close communication with a range of stakeholders, Maloney said, highlighting industry coordination through the CEO-led Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) and regional mutual assistance groups, which was critical to ensuring a safe and efficient response.

“The grid is the most important engine in America. If the grid doesn’t work, America doesn’t work,” Maloney said, noting that companies are actively investing to make the grid more resilient to threats like winter storms. “Our members will be investing more than $1 trillion in the coming years to make it more reliable, more resilient, and more affordable.”

Industry response to Fern was a driver of conversation throughout the NARUC summit. During a separate keynote, Under Secretary of Energy Alex Fitzsimmons, director of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, highlighted the federal government’s work through the ESCC to ensure crews and resources deployed to the areas that needed them most.

“The bulk power system held up, and we should be proud of that. We all should be proud of that effort,” Under Secretary Fitzsimmons told the NARUC audience.

‘The Impact From This Storm Cannot Be Overstated’: Industry-Government Partnerships Power Historic Fern Response

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:20:35 +0100

Now two weeks on from a historic winter weather event that blanketed more than 200 million Americans in ice, snow, and frigid temperatures, industry and government leaders have been outspoken about the importance of close and regular communication ahead of and during Winter Storm Fern.

“Before the winter storm began, through the mutual assistance program run through the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC), we had 65,000 utility workers ready to go, not just to make repairs in their own service territories, but across the entire affected area,” Deputy Secretary of Energy James Danly during a recent press briefing.

Deputy Secretary Danly noted that “we had crews moving from state to state offering assistance,” which is why workers were able to respond so quickly to “a peak of just about 1 million outages.”

“The bulk power system held up, and we should be proud of that. We all should be proud of that effort,” Acting Under Secretary of Energy Alex Fitzsimmons, director of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, said during a keynote address at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) Winter Policy Summit.

Under Secretary Fitzsimmons stressed the “strong partnerships” the federal government maintains through the ESCC that helped facilitate response to a storm that impacted more than 200 million Americans.

““The effort and the coordination among federal, state, local officials, our members, working across the industry, was amazing,” EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney said during a NARUC panel discussion.

Tens of thousands of workers from at least 44 states were active throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic in recent weeks, working through snow and ice to perform damage assessments and begin restoration work when it was safe to do so.

“The impact from this storm cannot be overstated, and the industry’s response in the wake of Fern was extraordinary,” EEI Senior Vice President for Energy Security and Industry Operations Scott Aaronson said during a recent United States Energy Association briefing. “There is a culture of mutual assistance in this industry.”

Aaronson noted that the energy industry was working “in lockstep, from the earliest stages of the storm,” with the federal government and with state and local partners to ensure an efficient restoration process. He stressed that cross-industry partnerships are vital to restoring power to customers.

Aaronson also underscored how EEI member companies’ investments in grid resilience and smart grid technologies—in part to meet growing energy demand from AI, data centers, and the onshoring of manufacturing—enabled a faster restoration process.

“This forward planning has allowed us to better meet growing demand, and also to lessen the impact of and quickly respond to extreme weather events,” he said. “Resilience investments matter.”

EEI's Drew Maloney: America Needs Permitting Reform 'As Soon as Possible'

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 22:00:20 +0100

In a new, wide-ranging, on-camera interview with the Washington Examiner, EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney called on Congress to streamline siting and permitting processes, which he said would “go right at the affordability issue” for customers.

“In order for us to maintain our global competitiveness, we have to be able to build generation and transmission faster than we do today,” Maloney said. “The cost imposed by permitting delays and litigation puts too much on the customer. We need [reform], and we need it as soon as possible.”

Maloney estimates red tape adds up to 25 percent to the cost of building new energy infrastructure. It also inhibits America’s global competitiveness, he said, noting that “China can build a power plant in one to two years, and it takes us more than a decade.”

Maloney also discussed the findings of a new study from Charles River Associates, which analyzed historical government data and found that electricity rates have tracked at or below inflation in 34 states during the past five years. It also found that data centers have not been a driver of rate increases in states outside of the PJM Interconnection in the Mid-Atlantic.

“Data centers really aren't driving the cost. There’s a lot of long-term planning that you see in some states—you've got it in Georgia and Louisiana, Mississippi—where they can save billions of dollars for customers over the time of the investment in the data center,” Maloney said.

Among other topics discussed:

On lowering costs for customers:

“Electric companies every day are working with their customers to identify more efficiencies in the system, whether it's grid-enhancing technologies that lower costs, software development that can ensure power is well balanced in the system.”

On partnerships with data centers:

“What these large load agreements are trying to do is protect customers. They're requiring the data centers to fund their interconnection, fund upgrades to the grid, and ultimately benefit the customer. If you look at a lot of the recent announcements that we've seen, the benefits to customers, the benefits to the local tax base are in the billions of dollars. Over the long term, this is a win-win for the communities, for the electric companies, for the customers, because we're going to get a more resilient grid.”

On permitting reform prospects:

“I think now is the time. There is a recognition that, in order for us to maintain our global competitiveness, we have to be able to build generation and transmission faster than we do today. It's the only way to address the real affordability problem, because the cost imposed by permitting delays and litigation puts too much on the customer.”

On the industry’s commitment to resilience:

“The grid is the most important engine in America. If the grid doesn't work, America doesn't work. And it requires investment. That's why you're going to see America's electric companies invest more than $1 trillion during the next four years—to make sure that the grid is reliable and as affordable as possible every single day.”

On response to Winter Storm Fern:

“You saw 65,000 lineworkers come from around the country to go down to the Southeast to work through two inches of ice to try to get wires back up and running, cut trees down, and work through the night to make sure that people had power back at their houses. That’s what we do in this industry. We pitch in. We ensure that the grid—which is the economic and, I would argue, national security backbone of the country—is always up and running.”

On electricity rate stability:

“What most people don't understand about electricity rates is they are really set at the state level. You have to look at the state averages, and there are some states—on the West Coast, especially California, and also New England and New York—that have disproportionately skewed the national average.”

On the importance of an all-of-the-above energy approach:

"We need all of the above. You look at a state like Iowa—a large percentage of their power comes from wind. Texas has a good mix of wind and solar. You see during a storm like Fern, where we became very reliant on fossil fuel as sort of base load—you need that, too. We need more nuclear. We need it all. We support it all, and, as we say, we need as many electrons on the grid as possible right now."

Podcast: New Analysis Finds U.S. Electricity Rates Largely Tracking Inflation

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:05:22 +0100

America’s electric companies are focused on providing customers with the energy of every day. They are prioritizing reliability and affordability as they position America to win the AI race and power the jobs, industries, and technologies of tomorrow.

An independent analysis conducted by Charles River Associates (CRA) recently found that average retail electricity rates have largely tracked inflation during the past several years—and that data centers are not driving up rates for customers throughout much of the United States.

EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney and CRA Energy Practice Vice President Matt DeCourcey joined a recent episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast to discuss the report’s findings, geographic variations, and the role of data centers in America’s energy landscape.

Drew Maloney (DM): I want to start by highlighting one key takeaway: For most U.S. electricity customers, retail rates have generally remained stable and have not outpaced inflation. This new research provides important context for why national average retail rates don't always reflect what customers are seeing at the state level. We're excited to hear more from you today about this, Matt.

EEI's member companies continue to work closely with regulators and policymakers to advocate for policies that keep customer bills as low as possible across the country, and the report highlights that electric companies are doing an effective job managing the cost that they can control.

Matt, can you give us an overview of how Charles River Associates analyzed data for this study?

Matt DeCourcey (MD): We started this process with the idea that we wanted to better understand what's been going on with rates—better understand how that compares to prevailing narratives.

We started with a data set of retail electric rates developed by the Energy Information Administration, giving us national average rates by month for 10 years. We also compiled a whole bunch of state-specific rates, going state-by-state for all the states excluding Alaska and Hawaii and including the District of Columbia.

We also used data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Form 1 filing to give us very detailed financial data, including electric company spending on an account-by-account basis with great granularity. Because companies are regulated on a cost-of-service basis, we can understand how their costs are changing and how rates are changing.

We were able to look company-by-company, year-by-year, to see what’s changing, how that correlates with rates, and answers to questions around where things are happening and why.

The national average rate doesn't really reflect reality for most customers. It's sort of the perils of using averages from the conversation you had in your first-year statistics class. We found that there was a small group of companies that had big rate increases. For most companies and most states, the rates weren't increasing. That was an important finding for us.

We found that companies have been managing their costs well—and, in most places, rates have been pretty stable. That's a testament to cost control. It’s the work of the companies, the result of constructive regulation, and the efforts of policy makers in certain states.

We found that data centers—which a lot of people have pointed to as the culprits behind rate increases—haven't really been pushing up rates. With very, very limited exceptions, we found that the rates were going up for specific reasons that we could identify. Those reasons weren’t related to data centers.

DM: What's causing that national average to go up—which is so commonly cited by newspapers and things that we're reading?

MD: It’s rate increases in the small handful of states where rates have been increasing rapidly.

We looked at rate changes over 5 years and 10 years on a state-by-state basis. In California, rates have been going up dramatically in the last five years. That's because of wildfire spending.

In the Northeast, New England, and New York, rates have been going up because wholesale market prices have been going up. The companies buy electricity on behalf of their customers, and they pass that through in the rates. When the wholesale prices go up, the rates go up.

That puts a lot of upward pressure on that national average—just the nature of the arithmetic that goes into it. For most of the other companies and most of the other states, the rate increases had been very moderate.

The average doesn’t represent most of the states and most of the electric companies. In fact, something like 34 states had changes in their rates that were less than the national average. About half of the states saw rates that had gone up consistent with inflation.

We go from this story of broad-based nationwide affordability concerns to one of very local and specific trends.

DM: You mentioned data centers, which have been a very popular theme here in Washington—data centers and the cost associated with powering them. What did you find in your study?

MD: For starters, most data centers that we’re talking about haven't been built yet. When we look back at the history of rates, in most cases, it’s hard to see how they could have increased prices.

It's important to draw the distinction between the AI-training, mega-data centers that are on the horizon and dominating the news nowadays and the data centers that have always been in Northern Virginia for processing credit card payments and things like that. Those mega centers are the ones that we have concerns about causing rates to increase for retail customers across the board. It just hasn't happened yet, because most of them haven't been built yet.

When we look at rates historically, we see rates going up in California and in the Northeast, which is not where many data centers are planning to go. They're going to other places.

There is no evidence to support the idea that data centers have made rates go up. Where the rates are going up is not where the data centers are.

We found that there is this emerging set of principles in regulation and ratemaking that is designed very specifically to prevent rate increases from data centers from happening. The regulators are going about it in lots of different ways. What they're doing is making rates and setting rules that are going to require data centers to pay their own cost of service where electric companies have to make investments to serve data centers. Those costs are going to flow back to the rates to the data centers, and it's going to hold the existing customers harmless.

One interesting development of late has been some hyperscalers coming out and making very specific statements and very specific commitments that they're going to pay for all the costs to serve them. It's the emerging consensus, and a set of best practices is starting to form.

DM: We've seen more than 25 states either enact large load tariffs or consider agreements that will protect customers and enhance the grid over the long term, right?

MD: Yes. When you look at that universe of rate making, all those tariffs look different. There are a handful of mechanisms that are going to make it so that, if a data center wants to connect to the grid, they have to bring the capital and make commitments

And, you're right, there's potential benefits for existing customers. There are investments to be made on the grid. There's also the potential that data centers reduce the cost of retail service for some customers. If you have a new large load customer show up on the grid, and it is paying its own costs, it's going to absorb some of the shared costs. That's going to benefit the customers that are already there.

DM: If you were advising policy makers, regulators, and other decisionmakers on key takeaways from this report, what would they be?

MD: Everything is local.

If you're a policy maker or a regulator considering intervening in a market, understand the problem that you're intervening in and what the solutions would be to consider. If I am in California, and I wanted to intervene in the market, I'd want to think about how we pay for wildfire costs. How do we think about some of the rooftop solar ratemaking concerns that the California Public Utilities Commission has said is also making rates go up for some customers significantly?

If I was in the Northeast, I'd have a very different set of questions. I'd be asking about how we unlatch ourselves from volatile wholesale markets. Do we make investments? Do we change the rules? Do we let electric companies own generation?

Elsewhere, I might wonder whether I have to intervene. Do I have evidence that there is an affordability crisis within my jurisdiction? If so, what do I do about it? There have been rates that have gone up, but, mostly, the markets and the systems have been working as designed in most places.

My other consideration, if I was a policy maker, would be what the industry's responsibility has been. It seems like, in most places, costs are being managed well. We haven't found any evidence to support the idea that the rates are going up because of mismanagement, poor planning, or because of something that should have been foreseen and wasn't.

We don't have any evidence—and, frankly, we don't think it's the case—that companies are profiting from these increases in the rates. The nature of the increases, in most cases, is they're collecting operating expenses that pass directly through to customers at cost. No markup, no profit for the shareholders. They're highly regulated at the state level.

If I was a regulator or a policy maker, I would be very reluctant to do things like curtail returns or anything that would erode the financial integrity of companies and impose penalties. It's just not warranted, and it wouldn't be appropriate.

DM: Let me ask about affordability. You all looked at Americans’ energy wallet and how that's changed over a 20-year period. What did you see in the data?

MD: Generally, the share of the energy wallet has been declining. We looked at how much of your average household budget is consumed by electricity. It’s not a huge band that we’re looking at.

We had a couple decades of data, and it only moves from 1 percent or 2 percent or 3 percent of total household budget. Over time, it is showing a steady decline downwards, which is to say that, over time, less of the average household’s budget is going to electricity.

That’s driven by a lot of things. That’s driven by costs that are fairly stable and by efficiency programs and efficiency of appliances. Society, as a whole, became more efficient over time. The impact on affordability is that, over time, the industry is requiring fewer dollars every month from your average household. It’s less than 2 percent.

DM: How do you differentiate between bills and rates?

MD: We looked at residential rates, because we think those are going to be of greatest interest to most customers and to policymakers. For your average household, it's the residential rate that sets the total cost of energy every month.

When you multiply total usage by the rate, you get the total bill. The bill is a function of both the rate and energy usage, both of which can change over time.

DM: The White House recently announced an agreement with governors that EEI has broadly supported to make changes to the PJM marketplace. What's your view of that announcement?

MD: It's interesting, and we'll be watching it closely to see where it goes. It actually tells us a lot about how we're going to look at data centers entering the market going forward.

It's not clear what comes of the announcement, specifically, but what it does tell us is that policy makers are going to intervene to protect existing customers from the potential of cost increases due to data centers. It’s one of these emerging principles in the industry that, where large loads and data centers are entering the market, they're not going to be subsidized by existing customers.

DM: Do you see companies getting into the generation business in PJM and other regions as one of the possible solutions here?

MD: It could be. One of the things that differentiates the impact of this most recent PJM capacity auction is that they're much more sharply felt in the states where the companies have divested their generation.

Having generation is a natural hedge against variation in the market. That's axiomatic. This is a variation in the market, so if all else is equal, companies that own generation on behalf of their customers would be better insulated from price shocks like this.

EEI’s Drew Maloney on Fern: ‘America’s Electric Companies Are Really Well Positioned to Deal With This’

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:33:02 +0100

Winter Storm Fern blanketed more than 200 million Americans in snow, sleet, ice, and frigid temperatures over the weekend, prompting one of the largest mutual assistance responses in the electric power industry’s history.

More than 65,000 workers from 43 states have been mobilized and are assessing damage and restoring power where it is safe to do so. That’s comparable to the historic response and recovery efforts seen during Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024.

“America’s electric companies are really well positioned to deal with this,” EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney said Monday morning on CNBC’s “Worldwide Exchange.”

Maloney highlighted the planning that began last week with the highest levels of industry and government, including with senior Administration officials, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Departments of Energy and Homeland Security, and dozens of state and local leaders, to ensure unity of effort in impacted communities.

“It’s really a unified effort,” Maloney said. “I think it’s really important for everyone to understand the coordination with federal, state, and local officials … to get power up as quickly as possible during this historic ice storm.”

While ice poses unique challenges to restoration, tens of thousands of lineworkers are braving frigid conditions across several states and will continue working around the clock to ensure power is restored to everyone who is able to receive it.

Watch Maloney’s full interview below, and visit the EEI Storm Center for the latest storm updates.

Data Centers: Costs and Customer Benefits

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 17:40:48 +0100

America’s electric companies work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to power the American economy and ensure the United States is home to the jobs, industries, and technologies of tomorrow.

They are working with tech companies, hyperscalers, and data centers to power the next wave of American innovation—while delivering clear benefits to the grid and existing customers.

Entergy Mississippi President and CEO Haley Fisackerly and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Head of Energy and Water for the Americas Brandon Oyer joined the Electric Perspectives podcast to discuss data center and electric company partnerships and a new electric rate and tariff study from Energy and Environmental Economics, or E3.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Electric Perspectives (EP): Brandon, tell us about your role at AWS and how you work with energy partners, including Entergy Mississippi.

Brandon Oyer (BO): As the head of power and water here for the Americas with AWS, I have the distinct privilege of working with a bunch of very bright people around the country and in Canada, Mexico, and South America. We get to work with utility partners to craft rates and contracts that power AWS on time and at a cost that delights our customers, while at the same time making investments into local communities—from the East Coast to the West Coast to the middle part of the country.

I continuously get to see opportunities to innovate and refine how we power data centers responsibly, how we power them reliably, and how we power them in a path to continue being clean.

That's fun. It's a challenging role. The times are exciting, and we're growing. It's fun to see the United States electric grid growing at a high rate in comparison to history.

We like to look around corners and make sure that we're doing the right thing for the communities that we live in. We want to make sure our customers aren't being burdened on their electric rates.

That's why we think this E3 study is important. We took time to dive in and learn here, so I look forward to talking about it a little bit more.

On the economic development impact, in Madison County, Miss., we're investing $10 billion to build two data center campuses, creating at least 1,000 full-time jobs. In Warren County, Miss., we're investing $3 billion—the largest private investment in the county's history. We’re creating another 200 jobs at that data center campus while supporting 300 additional jobs in and around the community.

Combined, these investments will support an estimated 3,000 jobs to bring these data center campuses to life and add $3.9 billion to Mississippi's GDP. These are high-paying jobs, including data center engineers, network specialists, operation managers, and security specialists.

EP: Haley, tell us about Entergy Mississippi’s customers and the communities that you serve?

Haley Fisackerly (HF): Sure. Entergy Mississippi is one of the five operating companies of Entergy Corporation. We serve 460,000 customers in the western part of Mississippi, in 45 of Mississippi's 82 counties. We've been serving the area since 1923.

About 60 percent of our customers are coalesced in what we call the metro area around the capital city of Jackson, Miss. That’s where AWS is making most of their investments.

Most of the 45 counties that we serve are in very rural areas—a lot of agriculture. In Jackson, there's a very diverse mix of businesses, education, some manufacturing. We haven’t historically had a large industrial base in Mississippi like our sister companies in other states. We have more residential and commercial customers, so having a large customer like AWS definitely changes our profile from that standpoint.

EP: Tell us more about the E3 study and its key takeaways.

BO: The No. 1 finding from that study is that Amazon data centers are not being subsidized by their utility customers. There’s no cross-subsidization between a residential customer and a large-load customer, such as an Amazon data center.

We've seen this study after study. If you look at the Joint Legislative and Audit Review Committee, they published similar findings in 2024. If you look at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab report that was released earlier this year, it found the same thing.

We actually find that these investments are enabling companies to make investments for the broader grid. Historically, customers would have to pay for this, but now that large load is coming along, these bigger customers are able to absorb that cost.

We find that data centers generate surplus revenues to the costs of producing and delivering electricity—on the order of about $33,000 per megawatt in 2025, growing to $60,000 per megawatt in 2030.

This surplus revenue enables the electric companies to continue making investments while not causing cross-subsidization. And, these crucial investments in grid infrastructure do everything from meeting immediate needs to supporting local residents to driving commercial growth while improving reliability. It’s a fun time to be a part of this.

EP: Haley, how is your team at Entergy Mississippi working with large customers like Amazon, and how does this work strengthen the grid and deliver value to your customers?

HF: Brandon touched on a good bit of this. If you take a moment to think about our industry, we have extensive infrastructure that we use to serve our customers: power plants, transmission lines, distribution lines, and a lot of these are fixed costs.

At the same time, we are facing aging infrastructure, the need to reinvest, weather risks that are impacting our business, and customer expectations. We are more dependent on electricity to power our lives and to support the way we work than ever before. That means there’s a lot of demand on the grid.

We’ve known that we need to make grid investments. Sadly, without demand growth in our area, the cost of our business was escalating very quickly. More than 20 percent of our customers live below the national poverty level. A large portion are living paycheck to paycheck. Affordability is a No. 1 issue for us.

What we’re able to do with Amazon is bring in this large customer with all the other benefits that Brandon discussed: new jobs and huge capital investments that are allowing us to make meaningful investments and improve the grid serving all of our customers.

We're also seeing them pay the full freight of their costs. We're having to make upgrades to the transmission system that improves import capabilities that benefit everyone, and they're paying those incremental costs. Substations that will have to be built to serve their facilities—they're paying 100 percent of those costs.

What is more exciting about this, and it makes me excited, is that we know we've got to invest to improve reliability. We had a $600 million capital plan already planned just to make the investments to improve our grid. Because of the new revenues coming in from AWS, we're going to be able to increase that by more than 50 percent—spending another $300 million on our reliability plan.

All of this will bring huge value from better service, more reliable service, and at a more affordable rate. In fact, because of AWS, we were able to pull a lot of those investments forward and improve reliability. We have a 50-percent reduction in outages with a 50-percent increase in spending, with no cost to customers. This is exciting, transformative, and it will make a difference in the lives of our customers and the communities we serve.

BO: There is a narrative out there that data centers are driving up costs. Haley, since we first started working together, back in 2023 and 2024, have you seen any shift in our thinking on this? Have you seen a shift since that narrative started to take hold?

HF: I’ve been in this business for 30 years and CEO of this company for 17 years. I’ve negotiated a lot of deals. Amazon and AWS were totally different characters. You were very cognizant of making sure this would not adversely impact customers and communities.

There has been a need for speed to market, service reliability, and recognition that these costs need to be covered.

Of late, there has seemed to be a lot of misinformation and confusion out there about what is driving rates.

In Mississippi, there was legislation passed to make this deal happen. The governor, the Mississippi legislature, and the public service commission were very supportive of the economic opportunity and made it very clear that this cannot harm existing customers. The legislation states specifically that, in my words, AWS is to pay their incremental cost to serve and provide benefits back to customers.

These new investments in the grid, from new generation down to enhanced transmission, are going to improve capabilities that benefit everyone.

EP: Brandon, how is your team working to support communities like those in Warren and Madison counties?

BO: In addition to paying our fair share, I do want to highlight that this isn't something new for us. This has been an operating tenet for Amazon for quite some time. Defining a good rate structure and providing impact to the community has been table stakes for us.

We're making significant investments, and we’re spending time and money to enable the local workforce. That's an important trait when we go and grow our business. We’ve partnered with Mississippi to build a skilled workforce for the future by partnering with Mississippi AI Innovation Hub and the AI Talent Accelerator program.

We’ve invested nearly $400,000 into the Bean Path, which is a Jackson-based AI tech educational nonprofit that's impacted 8,000 Mississippians. We're also proud to have the first cohort completed of the Infrastructure Pre-Apprenticeship Program in Holmes Community College.

These programs represent a commitment towards creating direct pathways from education to employment. We’ve also launched the Amazon Warren County Community Fund and invested an initial $150,000 to be managed by a non-profit, Change X. That grant supports local initiatives focused on science, technology, engineering, and math education; sustainability and environmental programs; digital skills; cultural and heritage programs; and health and well-being initiatives. It's open to individuals, community groups, schools, and nonprofits all across Warren County.

These are just a couple of the things that we do that impact the customers around us. We just want to have a lasting, positive impact and be a good partner in the communities where we operate.

EP: Haley, Entergy's long been a leader on workforce development and making sure that you're having positive community impacts. What have you all been seeing, and how does Amazon’s work complement the work that your team is doing?

HF: I'm a fourth-generation Mississippian, and I am so excited by what we're seeing here. We have struggled with brain drain and jobs being lost. Amazon has come in, and we have now brought in a new sector that’s creating new job opportunities for young people.

The $10 billion minimum that Amazon is investing in Madison County is expected to generate an incremental $80 million per year in ad valorem taxes. Half of that goes to the local school district. Think about the young lives that are going to be changed.

The infrastructure improvements, the water system improvements, the road improvements from this mean that local taxes won’t have to be raised for some time because of the revenue coming in here.

More than 55 local businesses have received contract work or work directly at these data centers. These are often small mom-and-pop businesses, though they can also be very large companies.

We have seen manufacturers in Mississippi announce expansions to make the components used by data centers and the electric power industry. More than 2,000 jobs have been created so far, so the ripple effect is like one we've never seen before.

We've worked with a lot of great companies that have come in and made investments, but it's usually been made after they have built out their facilities, and they're up and running.

Amazon came in earlier, started to work with local educational groups, looked at training opportunities, and looked at other partnerships as they’ve been building this out. When you think about all of those different businesses that are benefiting from this, the tax revenue coming in, that has a positive impact on local individuals and families.

EP: Electric companies are always looking to balance affordability with reliability. Haley, how do these projects align with your efforts to deliver both of those things for customers?

HF: I mentioned earlier that we were faced with this dilemma when we knew we had to make a lot of investment in this region, and we were not growing here in Mississippi. What Amazon has allowed us to do is pull those investments forward. For example, we knew we would have to build two new power plants post-2030. We knew that we had an opportunity to deploy more solar renewables and batteries.

The fact that we were able to pull those projects forward means we're saving customers more than $2 billion. These plants are also much cleaner.

They use less water. They also are much cleaner technologies. They will have carbon capture capabilities and the ability to use hydrogen if and when that becomes economic. That alone will save more than $700 million in commodity costs for our customers.

We're also dealing with more storm costs every year. Now, having a large customer like Amazon at the table means we can share in those fixed costs and create rate relief for our customers. It’s a huge value in the sense that a large customer is now helping share in the cost of large investments.

We're doing things right now that we would not have been able to do had this opportunity not come forward with Amazon.

PPL Corporation's Vince Sorgi: Wired for Intelligence

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 20:00:54 +0100

Electric Perspectives (EP): Vince, it’s been several years since you first outlined your thoughts in Electric Perspectives of PPL’s Utility of the Future strategy. How has that strategy evolved, and why is it more important than ever?

Vince Sorgi (VS): Our original Utility of the Future strategy to get stronger, smarter, cleaner, more resilient, and highly efficient remains largely intact, but two major industry shifts have required us to update and sharpen our approach.

First, we’re seeing massive data center requests to connect to our grids in Pennsylvania and Kentucky—demand at a scale we hadn’t anticipated just a few years ago. For example, in our Pennsylvania service territory, we have more than 20 gigawatts (GW) of data center projects in advanced planning—nearly triple the current peak demand that took more than a century to reach.

Second, while affordability has always been part of our strategy, business and household budgets have tightened further in recent years, making affordability a front-and-center issue in policy discussions and even gubernatorial races.

To create headroom for needed investments, becoming more efficient as a company and as an industry is more critical than ever. To address these shifts, we’ve updated our strategy to prioritize building highly reliable, gas-fired, combined-cycle generation. This is evidenced by our regulatory filings in Kentucky and our joint venture with Blackstone Infrastructure to build generation to serve new data centers in Pennsylvania.

In addition, we’ve doubled down on deploying advanced technology and AI—AI that will be key to enabling the next wave of operational efficiency. In short, our strategy continues to evolve so we can deliver safe, reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy for our customers no matter how the landscape changes

EP: What are the key components of PPL’s strategy today? And how are you defining “utility of the future”?

VS: Our Utility of the Future strategy centers on five primary objectives:

Improve the reliability and resiliency of our electric and gas networks through system hardening, smart grid technology, and automation.
Advance a cleaner energy future affordably and reliably. This includes building natural gas combined-cycle generation, renewables, and battery storage while accelerating clean energy research and development (R&D).
Deliver operational efficiencies to support affordability. Every dollar we save in operations and maintenance expenses is $8 that we can invest to improve infrastructure without impacting customer bills.
Empower our customers through digital solutions. There is tremendous potential to improve the customer experience through connected tech and AI.
Develop and empower our employees to thrive in a rapidly changing energy landscape, equipping them with the skills, tools, and mindset to lead and adapt as our industry evolves.

The future we envision is generation that’s cleaner, more diverse and less-centralized, including substantial behind-the-meter generation enabled by our networks. It’s transmission and distribution that’s intelligent, more reliable, resistant to increased storms and flooding, self-healing, and able to detect failing equipment before outages occur.

It’s decision-making driven by powerful analytics and deep insights mined from a wealth of sensor-driven data. It’s highly efficient operations using technology and AI to deliver better results at lower costs.

And, it’s technology-enabled talent, next-generation digital architecture, and a dynamic, engaging, and highly collaborative workplace shaping the future of energy.

In a nutshell, the utility of the future is one that’s ready for anything—and always ready to deliver for our customers, our communities, and our shareowners.

EP: What can you share about the progress you are making with this strategy and what you’re doing to position the company for success?

VS: We recognized early on that to implement our Utility of the Future strategy, we needed to change every aspect of our business without jeopardizing the critical services we provide. That began with how the company was organized and who we had leading it. So, over the past few years, we’ve completed a dramatic transformation of PPL—one that’s set the stage for everything we’re accomplishing now.

We built a strong, experienced, and highly collaborative leadership team aligned around a clear vision, mission, and set of new corporate values. We restructured our organization to break down silos, speed the adoption of best practices across the enterprise, and drive continuous improvement. We developed common design and operations standards across our utilities to consistently drive advanced technology and more robust engineering and construction specs. Every part of our capital plan was scrutinized and realigned to ensure it fully supports our strategy and delivers value.

Importantly, we also made bold moves on the technology front. We hired a new Executive Vice President of Technology and Innovation reporting directly to me. We launched an ambitious Business Reinvention initiative and have since begun partnering with some of the biggest and brightest technology firms in the world to help us achieve our vision, deploy digital solutions, and incorporate AI. This includes firms like Accenture, Microsoft, SAP, GE Vernova, Landis & Gyr, ServiceNow, and Quant.

These are not just technology providers—they are strategic partners who have signed up to help us achieve our strategy. The level of partnership and engagement with these firms is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and it will be one of the enabling factors in achieving our vision. And, just as importantly, we established a change management center of excellence to help our teams better embrace and lead through this change.

Setting the stage in this way was not easy and took a lot of time and commitment, including from me as the CEO of the company, but we’re already seeing the benefits: faster execution, greater efficiency, and a culture that’s energized and ready to tackle the challenges and opportunities ahead.

EP: The intersection of AI and energy is one of the hottest topics in our industry these days. How is PPL enabling the AI revolution, and how do you see AI fitting into your overall strategy?

VS: AI is like the industrial revolution 2.0 on steroids. It is reshaping the landscape, bringing new hurdles to overcome, but also opening doors to transform our operations and support our strategy in ways we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago.

At PPL, we’ve made it a strategic priority to serve this new data center demand, and our strategy is twofold. First, enable speed to market and rapidly connect data centers to the grid through industry-leading responsiveness and agility. Second, support the development of new generation to meet this growing demand.

To achieve the first objective, we’ve put in place an interconnection process that allows us to deliver a high-level scope and estimates to developers within 5–10 days, provide a full feasibility report within two months, and support construction in 6–12 months, pending required regulatory approvals. Thanks to investments we’ve made and continue to make in a highly reliable grid, we’re able to quickly connect these large customers, often with minimal additional transmission work.

On the generation side, PPL recently formed a joint venture with Blackstone Infrastructure to build generation to serve new data center demand in Pennsylvania in a way that directly supports economic development, helps to mitigate rising electricity prices for customers, delivers value for our shareowners, and helps—not hurts—resource adequacy in PJM.

In addition, we’re supporting legislation in Pennsylvania that would allow regulated utilities to build and own generation again, given the PJM market, alone, is failing to deliver the generation needed to meet growing demand.

We believe unprecedented demand growth requires an unprecedented response. Given the pace and scale of new data center demand, we need everyone who is willing and able to build generation to do so as soon as possible.

Sorgi joins members of the PPL Corporation team in ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

EP: How is PPL dealing with speculation around data center demand projections?

VS: We know that demand forecasting is a critical component of system planning. In Pennsylvania, for example, our PPL Electric Utilities subsidiary collaborates closely with developers and PJM to validate the demand of proposed data center projects.

This starts with evaluating the technical and financial feasibility of a project, as well as established land control. To ensure an accurate representation of emerging demand, only data center projects with advanced agreements are included in the annual load forecast that PPL Electric provides to PJM. To be clear, these are advanced agreements with hyperscalers or developers authorizing grid connection work—agreements with enforceable cost recovery that escalates as milestones are met, often reaching tens of millions of dollars.

Additionally, PJM is discounting the large demand forecast that we provide by up to 30 percent. In addition, we are working with other transmission owners in PJM and engaging in focused conversations with regulators to ensure consistency and confidence in load forecasts.

EP: There’s growing concern that competitive markets like PJM aren’t incentivizing new generation fast enough to meet surging demand. There has also been pushback from Independent Power Producers (IPPs) about reopening the door to regulated utility ownership of generation. What are PPL’s views on the matter?

VS: This is one of the most urgent issues facing our industry right now. All of the signals and all of the forecasts point to a problem—generation is just not being built, or built fast enough, to satisfy future demand.

PJM has warned of a capacity shortage as early as the 2026/2027 delivery year, citing accelerating retirements and slow replacement build-out. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation has repeatedly warned that resource adequacy risks are rising, especially in regions relying heavily on market signals. Despite record-breaking capacity prices, PJM’s market is failing to deliver the new generation needed to meet rising demand—proving that price signals, alone, just aren’t enough. And, of the more than 800 GW of total capacity that has entered PJM’s queue since 1998, only about 11 percent has actually gone into service.

Bottom line: proposals don’t power homes and businesses. Steel in the ground does. While this is often positioned in the media as an “us versus them” debate between regulated utilities and IPPs, that’s not how we view it at PPL, and it doesn’t need to be that way. Ultimately, the grid doesn’t care who wins that debate—it just needs solutions. In a world of surging demand and evolving risks, securing our energy future requires an all-of-the-above approach, with every tool, every partner, and every solution on the table. PPL is committed to being proactive, not reactive, in addressing resource adequacy and ensuring our infrastructure keeps pace with economic growth and technological change.

The legislation introduced in Pennsylvania would allow utility-owned generation to complement the market, not replace it. It would allow utilities to build generation only when the reserve margin isn’t met through market mechanisms, with robust regulatory review and opportunities for market comparison.

In other words, utility-owned generation is only a backstop if the market doesn’t deliver. If the market delivers, then the utilities will never own generation in rate base. And, if the utility does end up owning generation, and that generation produces excess revenue, 100 percent of that net revenue would be returned to customers, ensuring customers benefit from any upside while being shielded from downside risk.

The other key aspect of the legislation is permitting long-term contracts between the state’s utilities and the IPPs to help derisk IPP construction of new generation should they want to go that route versus just relying on market price signals. In short, the proposed legislation contains the kind of smart solutions and ideas we need more of, and we’re hopeful such legislation can gain lawmakers’ support.

A recent PJM proposal to incentivize large customers to “bring their own generation” and encourage demand flexibility is also something that we think has merit, and we’ll be involved in fleshing out details to advance that concept as a workable proposal.

Markets worked when demand was flat and supply was abundant—but that world has been flipped on its head. We’re entering an era of explosive growth and shifting reliability needs, and we believe it is time to stop looking in the rearview mirror and start planning for the road ahead.

EP: Powering AI is clearly one piece of the equation for PPL. On the flip side, how are you thinking about using AI to deliver better outcomes?

VS: AI isn’t just the next wave of innovation—it’s a tidal force promising to reshape our entire industry. The more we learn about the possibilities of AI, the more we see how truly transformational it will be and how it can accelerate our strategy.

Ultimately, our vision is to embed AI as a core capability in every aspect of our business. We’re not just talking about classical and generative AI, but agentic AI that adapts and acts, and maybe even one day physical AI—think, for example, of robots performing or assisting with some of our most dangerous work.

As part of our Reinvention effort, we’ve launched cross-functional teams to advance new technology and AI in four key value streams: Advanced Customer Ops and Engagement, Predictive Field Ops and Asset Management, Grid and Pipeline of the Future, and Next Generation Enterprise Services.

In each of these areas, we’re either already using or exploring the use of AI. For example, in customer service, we’re piloting a multilingual, AI-powered digital customer service agent—Alex—that we’re incredibly excited about. Alex will eventually be available 24/7 to handle routine customer inquiries in 70-plus languages, freeing up our representatives for more complex issues.

In addition, we’re deploying an AI-driven platform that will incorporate AI at every step of the customer experience. This includes handling the initial customer contact, seamlessly handing it off to the best-fit agent, delivering AI coaching and insights to our agents, providing automated summaries post-call, and triggering backend workflows so our agents can spend less time typing and more time listening and assisting.

In our grid and field operations, we’re using AI to monitor equipment health, predict failures, dispatch crews proactively, and optimize crew routing, outage response, and vegetation management. We’re working on AI agents to help us optimize protective settings in grid operations to enhance reliability and fault response. We’re also developing digital agents that will deliver job-specific safety messages, providing tailored reminders about hazards before crews begin a job.

Among other examples, we’re exploring the use of AI agents to lighten the heavy lift associated with complex regulatory filings. These agents will be able to assist with pre- and post-filing work, including responses to third-party discovery requests that can be incredibly time-consuming and require quick turnaround. This could trim thousands of labor hours to help keep energy affordable.

And finally, we’ve begun to roll out Copilot for Microsoft 365 to our employees, helping them work smarter and more efficiently. We have only just begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible here.

“AI isn’t just the next wave of innovation—it’s a tidal force promising to reshape our entire industry.”

EP: What’s your message to investors and analysts attending the EEI Financial Conference in November?

VS: My message is simple: PPL is not just keeping up with change—we’re leading it. Our industry is positioned at the intersection of some of the most important trends taking place in our country. And, at PPL, we have a clear strategy, a strong track record of execution, and a culture that embraces innovation.

We’re thinking bigger, we’re thinking bolder, and we have an opportunity, both as a company and as an industry, to build utilities of the future that are stronger, smarter, cleaner, and ready to power the next century of progress. The key is to enable all of this progress while, at the same time, keeping energy affordable for customers. That has been a core component of our strategy since we launched the new PPL in 2022, and it remains a core part of the strategy going forward.

EP: Any closing thoughts on what it will take to succeed in this new era?

VS: Innovation. Agility. The foresight to seize opportunities created by next-generation digital architecture, cloud solutions, and advanced technology. Enhanced collaboration across the industry, in R&D, with technology partners, and with a wide array of stakeholders, including the IPPs. And, above all, the courage to embrace change.

The challenges we face are complex, but in every challenge lies opportunity. At PPL, we’re building the utility of the future today, and we’re excited to help shape the energy future for our customers, our communities, and our shareowners.

Highlights From EEI's Financial Conference

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 14:15:00 +0100

This year, EEI was thrilled to welcome CNBC Senior National Correspondent Brian Sullivan, co-anchor of “Power Lunch," to EEI's Financial Conference. Sullivan interviewed industry leaders throughout the event, hosted a CEO leadership panel, and brought the event's critical conversations to a national audience.

Scroll through for highlights from EEI member company leaders' interviews with CNBC:

EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney

Pacific Gas & Electric Company CEO Patti Poppe

NextEra Energy Chairman, President, and CEO John Ketchum

Duke Energy President and CEO Harry Sideris

EEI Chair Calvin Butler, President and CEO of Exelon

Edison International President and CEO Pedro J. Pizarro

Why Permitting Reform Matters for America’s Energy Future

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 16:35:00 +0100

As electric companies work to build the transmission lines and infrastructure needed for reliable energy future, they face complex and often lengthy approval processes. Reforming these processes is essential for electric companies to deliver reliable energy while keeping bills as low as possible for customers.

EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney and ITC Holdings Corp. President Krista Tanner joined the Electric Perspectives podcast to discuss permitting reform and how electric companies are meeting rising energy demand while maintaining grid resilience.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Electric Perspectives (EP): Drew, what is your perspective on permitting reform? How do delays in permitting processes impact projects and increase costs for customers?

Drew Maloney (DM): There's an incredible amount of demand for new energy that we need to meet as quickly as possible, and we need less red tape from Washington and the freedom to build the infrastructure needed to meet this demand.

It can take 6 to 12 years just to get new transmission and generation projects to market. In China, it takes 1 to 3 years. The amount of time these projects take hurts customers and hurts reliability. That's why we're leaning in and supporting permitting reform here.

EP: Krista, what’s your perspective on the permitting challenges that companies are facing today?

Krista Tanner (KT): I couldn't agree more with Drew. We're at a critical time in our country's history. We are in a global race for energy security, AI innovation, and economic development. It takes way too long to build in this country. We had a transmission project take almost 13 years to complete, and that's unacceptable. Drew mentioned China, where they can build by decree. I'm not suggesting we do that. We don't do that in this country. Still, we absolutely can modernize our processes and get this built much faster.

EP: Is the transmission project that you’re referring to the Cardinal-Hickory Creek Transmission Line?

KT: Yes. The Cardinal-Hickory Creek project was approved by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) in 2011. It was one of MISO's multi-value projects, which are very aptly named, because they provide economic, reliability, and resilience value. They were groundbreaking at the time.

This project ranged from Dubuque, Iowa to Madison, Wis. It was complex, because we needed approvals from two states and the federal government. It traversed the Upper Mississippi Wildlife Refuge and the Mississippi River.

We had to get 33 permits from 15 different agencies. Some were federal, which required National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) reviews. The NEPA process took seven years. We had 29 public engagement opportunities, and those consisted of public information meetings, open houses, and comment periods. We built a very responsible project that spanned more than 90 percent existing rights of way. It was an environmentally responsible way to build a project, and we received approvals because of the way we went about this.

That's when the litigation began. The project was subject to five different lawsuits and four different injunctions. It extended the process even longer. We ultimately prevailed, but it took 13 years, which is way too long. And, while this process dragged on, customers didn’t benefit and were deprived of low-cost energy and a resilient grid.

There were landowners involved in litigation early in the process. By the end, though, it was environmental groups that were not impacted by or were not adjacent to the refuge. They were using the federal process as a way to stop the project.

EP: Drew, you recently wrote a letter to Congressional leadership advocating for permitting reform. What are you advocating for, and why is now the time for Congress to act on this issue?

DM: Krista’s story highlights the challenge that we're facing in America. A project like hers took 13 years, and many other projects throughout the country are having the same results. That is unacceptable today. We will never be able to meet the needs of our customers if this continues.

That's why we sent our letter to Congress, and we called out for several items. One is to streamline NEPA to ensure we don't have this endless litigation.

Two, we need to strengthen and extend the nationwide permitting under the Clean Water Act Section 404, which already is working. We need to codify that and expedite state water quality certifications under the Clean Water Act.

Three, we need to right-size the National Historic Preservation Act, so you can properly balance preservation goals and the deployment of new energy infrastructure.

And, we need to fully fund the U.S. National Laboratories as we work with them to develop new and emerging technologies that provide value across the grid.

The “why now” is very simple: These basic reforms will do several things. They will keep costs to customers as low as possible, they will increase reliability, and they will support the building of new generation and transmission infrastructure that we need to power manufacturing activity, expand small businesses, and develop the technologies that are so critical to the United States.

If you think about a project that was supposed to be completed in 3 years and it takes 13 years, your whole supply chain costs are going to go up. The fact that customers aren't going to receive the benefits for 10 more years means additional costs to them. People don't appreciate how much the delays and litigation impact customers, who get stuck with paying the price for all of this over the long haul.

We are thrilled to know that Secretary Wright actually concurred with the overarching recommendations that we put forward. He has committed to developing an energy workforce strategy that enables effective workforce planning and supports the development of a highly skilled workforce. We're excited to see what comes out of that and we're expecting it to be published this fall.

KT: It’s also very expensive to mobilize and then demobilize crews. And, when you're building a transmission line in sensitive areas, sometimes you can only build during certain times of the year because of environmental habitats. If you get an injunction and then it gets lifted, you still might have to wait months and months before you can start. The issue really compounds upon itself.

EP: From ITC’s perspective, what opportunities do you see to enhance, improve, or streamline the process?

KT: At a high level, we need guardrails around what needs to be reviewed in the NEPA process. Projects that don't cross federal lands are a good place to start. We can narrow the scope of what's reviewed and how we conduct those reviews.

We would also advocate for a “super venue,” or a court that's specialized and understands these processes and can review cases quickly and raise the standard for injunction. Cardinal-Hickory Creek was enjoined four times, yet we ultimately prevailed on the merits. It should not have been stopped at those junctures.

I want to be clear: No one's advocating for the absence of a judicial review. Everyone deserves their day in court. We want to do this the right way. We want to do right by the environment and the communities that we serve. We can do that and modernize and streamline our current system.

EP: Drew, in thinking about permitting reform, how important is it to approach members of Congress and their staff with solutions, not just with problems?

DM: You don't win in Washington without solutions. Our members understand that the most critical thing we can do is provide affordable and reliable power to our customers.

Not only are we working closely with the Administration and with policymakers in state governments and the federal government on permitting reform—we're working on mutual assistance programs, cybersecurity issues, and supply chain challenges. We are offering solutions to all these issues in order to improve the customer experience.

EP: Krista, how do you approach community engagement around a major infrastructure project?

KT: We try to go above and beyond, and we try to engage stakeholders very early in the process to make sure that the route we're selecting has minimal impact. We engage landowners, we engage environmental groups to avoid environmentally sensitive areas, and we engage community leaders, because they're going to hear about the project from their constituents. We don't want them to be surprised.

We also engage our employees and our organized labor friends who are building the projects, because they live and work in these communities, and they're really the trusted resources that their neighbors are going to consult. We try to bring everyone—from employees, to our landowners, to community leaders—on board.

EP: I imagine these projects also have more direct community impacts, in addition to the grid reliability and affordability benefits?

KT: Absolutely. There’s economic development, property taxes, and so many great stories about individuals.

I recently heard a story about a local diner in Montfort, Wis. Like a lot of restaurants post-pandemic, it was slow coming back. But, because of the infusion of the workers who were working on the Cardinal-Hickory Creek line, the diner went from a very slow lunch period to only serving one menu item a day because they couldn't handle the crowd. To go from wondering if your business is going to make it to having so much work that you almost can't handle it is a really great story.

We sometimes forget about the real people and communities who are impacted by this influx of work. The workers may be temporary in some cases, but then you still have a resilient, reliable grid that's going to enable economic development and new projects in your community.

EP: Drew, how do you think about workforce development as you’re engaging here in Washington?

DM: Our industry supports more than 7 million jobs. During the next decade, it's expected that we're going to have to add 30 million new energy workers to our communities. We have partnered with the Center for Energy Workforce Development to raise awareness of this need for skilled workers.

We're working with high schools and colleges to develop curriculums, to educate people, and to highlight the needs that we're going to have. We’ll need everything from lineworkers, to cybersecurity experts, to people who can implement AI technologies, to accountants. We are focused on meeting that need and letting everyone know that our industry provides rewarding and well-paying jobs.

EP: Are you all optimistic about where we are as an industry and the progress that you’re seeing?

DM: I am. We are at a very unique inflection point. We are poised to win the AI race, to bring back more manufacturing jobs to the United States, and to maintain affordability for our customers.

There’s recognition that we must reform our permitting processes, and we’ve seen bipartisan support building on Capitol Hill to address these issues. I'm very optimistic that at some point during the next 12 months, we are going to see progress and hopefully a bill gets passed and makes it to the president's desk.

KT: I agree. This is just too important to get wrong, and we're at a critical time in our history. We've got to win the AI race. We've got to reshore more manufacturing activity. We've got to support all these American jobs, and we can't do it without permitting reform.

I think our leaders know that. As tough as some bipartisan agreements can be, I'm confident that our leaders will rise to the occasion.

Podcast Highlights: Industry Leaders on Building America’s Workforce

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:41:29 +0200

The electric power industry is a key economic driver for the United States, accounting for 1 in 20 American jobs and 5 percent of U.S. GDP. Workforce development is a top priority for electric companies as they expand and strengthen the grid and power the jobs and industries of the future.

FirstEnergy Pennsylvania President John Hawkins and Center for Energy Workforce Development (CEWD) Executive Director Missy Henriksen recently joined an episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast to share their thoughts on attracting, retaining, and developing a skilled energy workforce. The episode was hosted by EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Drew Maloney (DM): Missy, can you give us a snapshot of the current energy workforce and the role that it plays in supporting our economy?

Missy Henriksen (MH): Absolutely. The U.S. Energy and Employment report that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently published found that there were 8.5 million people working directly in energy jobs in 2024.

We often talk about the electric power industry being 5 percent of the GDP—the first 5 percent, of course, because nothing works without energy. That holds true on the human capital side, as well. We account for 5 percent of the jobs in this country, keeping the lights on and keeping things moving for the nation.

DM: John, you lead one of the largest electric companies in Pennsylvania. What does a highly skilled workforce mean for ensuring reliability and serving your customers?

John Hawkins (JH): Our communities rely on a resilient and reliable electric grid, so we have to have a workforce that has advanced skills and expertise to deliver on those expectations—especially during this period of rapid industry transformation.

At FirstEnergy, we serve 6 million-plus customers in six states. We're investing $28 billion across our footprint through 2029. In Pennsylvania, that includes $15 billion in infrastructure enhancements, people, processes, and facilities—and the key word there is “people.”

We have to have a highly skilled workforce to complete this work safely and efficiently, allowing us to meet those expectations of our customers and communities.

DM: Missy, let me turn back to you. CEWD regularly publishes reports about the energy workforce. What trends are you seeing, and what do they mean for the next generation of energy professionals?

MH: We’re really seeing employers looking at their hiring practices with a great deal of innovation as they think about workforce development differently. It’s no longer, “Hey, HR, we need to hire some people,” but it’s an increasing commitment to the long game and attracting talent.

We’re seeing companies work together more closely in these efforts so that a rising tide will lift all boats. We're seeing, increasingly, a commitment to sector solutions and working together on major workforce opportunities and challenges, instead of every company looking at moving mountains on their own.

About 50 percent of the workforce is expected to retire in the next 5 to 10 years, which is evoking a need to focus on knowledge transfer and making sure we've got a strong talent pipeline to follow those exiting the workforce.

We're also seeing major conversation around the increasing reliance on digital skills and what that means for pre-employment training and upskilling the existing workforce. These are just some of the conversations driving significant industry action.

DM: You also were the former chair of the 21st Century Energy Workforce Advisory Board (EWAB), helping to shape the future energy workforce from the federal level. Can you share more about your work with EWAB and how you worked with DOE on workforce development strategies?

MH: Absolutely. EWAB was formed under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to advise the U.S. Secretary of Energy on developing a skilled energy workforce to meet current and future labor needs.

We were thrilled to be called on early in the current Administration’s transition to support Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his team with recommendations to develop and implement workforce strategy. We worked really closely with the Office of Energy Jobs within DOE, and they were tremendous thought and action partners in our work.

Our recommendations to Secretary Wright included providing significant support to scale pathways for well-paying, high-quality energy jobs. We focused on new ways to get people into energy roles, including through career and technical education, apprenticeships, and other earn-and-learn models.

The Administration is focusing a lot of emphasis on the importance of registered apprenticeship programs, so we're also making recommendations on the importance of increasing awareness and excitement around energy careers—for career-ready adults and for students.

Also, our recommendations focused on positioning DOE as a leader for innovative, effective, non-siloed solutions to support the development of the workforce as a sector. I think DOE is really making the commitment that they're not just focusing on the technology side of the industry—but, certainly, the people side, as well.

DM: John, coming back to you, FirstEnergy has been recognized for its workforce development and apprenticeship programs, including your Power Systems Institute. Can you tell us how these programs work and what makes them successful?

JH: At FirstEnergy, we are growing and investing in our team, which we know to be the heart of operating a modern grid. We have more than 11,500 FirstEnergy employees dedicated to safety, reliability, and operational excellence.

Through our Power Systems Institute, we've trained nearly 2,600 line and substation workers. This model was unpaid, because we were paying for workers’ education to understand the theory part of the equation. During the summer, enrollees would get paid on-the-job training.

What we found with that model is that it was challenging for some who had families. So, in 2023, we transitioned to a paid apprenticeship model, more in-step with today's competitive labor market. Now, candidates are hired at the onset of the apprenticeship program, so that makes it more accessible to a lot more individuals.

We’re also targeting our hiring to keep workers in areas where they want to be, which helps minimize turnover. We have a lot of opportunities here. Our apprentices can obtain a college degree with financial assistance that we provide. We are working to get our program certified by the Department of Labor, which will make it nationally recognized and increase the appeal to candidates. It will also allow us to access funding and incentives and build union confidence, which is really critical to a successful program.

DM: Missy, CEWD supports programs across the country that help companies replicate successful workforce models like what John’s describing at FirstEnergy. What guidance would you give to electric companies that are working on building their own workforce pipelines?

MH: The first answer would be to call John and his team. You all are doing some incredible work up there. I really appreciate hearing more about the focus you've put on apprenticeships and now DOL-registered apprenticeship programs. I think that will be a game changer as we move forward in the industry.

I also can't stress enough the importance of partnerships. There's a lot of work to be done—a lot of opportunities for the industry to attract a highly skilled energy workforce—that is best done through partnerships.

Community outreach and engagement is important, because workforce development is a long game. The more we build effective partnerships—effective relationships with community-based organizations, community colleges, technical schools, workforce boards, and workforce systems and communities—those efforts will go a long way in making sure that there's fruit on those trees as we get down the road.

The other thing that is a game changer for workforce development is the introduction of the new Energy and Natural Resources Career Cluster, which is providing the first opportunity the industry has had in 25 years to more easily get energy curriculum into classrooms.

As companies are preparing for their future workforce strategies, perhaps putting the fine print on what they'll be doing in 2026, I can't stress enough the importance of the opportunities that are being enabled by that Career Cluster.

DM: John, is there any advice you would give to your energy company colleagues out there on how to pursue programs like this?

JH: I think Missy and I are reading from the same playbook. One of the keys to making this possible is the partnerships, and one of our industry’s most important partnerships is with our partners in organized labor.

When we set out on developing our new apprenticeship program, we engaged and partnered with both our International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Utility Workers Union of America partners. The entire way, they were part of building a curriculum, the evaluation process, the interviews to ensure that together we are aligned on the candidates who will lead us forward. These aren't just jobs. These are careers, and we felt this wouldn't have been possible without our union partners. We're extremely grateful for their partnership.

DM: John, as we look to the future, new technologies are creating new kinds of energy jobs. What are some of the emerging opportunities that you’re seeing?

JH: Technology really has the potential to reduce manual and hazardous tasks, so we can allow folks to focus on high-value activities, especially with a focus on improving safety and job satisfaction. Using drones, for example, has been impactful, helping us with aerial inspections during storms or during day-to-day work.

When you think about our service territory in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, we’ve got mountains. Drones help speed our bias for action when we have events, and we're using some AI-driven advanced analytics when it comes to vegetation.

We have a lot of poles, we have a lot of wires, and we also have a lot of trees. We know how impactful trees can be to our electric service quality, so we have an advanced vegetation analytics tool that we've designed to predict and reduce tree-related outages before they occur. Through machine learning and taking internal data; external data on soil, weather, outage records, and geographical topography; and aerial photos, we can identify problematic trees so to minimize outages and manage our crews more effectively.

DM: For each of you, what do you believe will make the biggest impact on strengthening America's energy workforce in the next several years?

JH: Two words: Act now. It takes four to five years to develop a certified lineworker. Based on the level of demand growth we're seeing, we can't waste another moment in ensuring that we're prepared to deliver on the needs of our customers and communities.

And, it's not just lineworkers. There are a lot of important positions to fill in this space. As we're thinking about the future, we need to consider how we can best be positioned to lead on technology and AI.

MH: Prioritizing workforce development is a Page One issue. You also need to engage not just on your own, but through sector strategies—working with others at the state and national level. And, get involved with the Energy and Natural Resources Career Cluster. Just make sure, as John said, to act now. Make workforce development a priority.

Duke Energy’s Harry Sideris on Resilience and Affordability

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 14:37:50 +0200

Harry Sideris is president and CEO of Duke Energy, having served in various leadership roles at the organization for nearly three decades.

Sideris recently joined the Electric Perspectives podcast to discuss his vision for Duke Energy and reflect on the devastating 2024 hurricane season.

Following is an abbreviated transcript, lightly edited for length and clarity. To listen to the full episode and catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Electric Perspectives (EP): You’ve had a long career in the energy industry and at Duke Energy. Tell us about your career journey and how your background is shaping your leadership of the company?

Harry Sideris (HS): I've had the honor and privilege of working for Duke Energy and its predecessors for almost 30 years. It all started with responding to a classified ad in the newspaper. I know that's a foreign concept to people today. That's how I ended up getting my job at Carolina Power & Light (CP&L) back in 1996.

As an engineer, I thought I was applying for a job at a power plant, solving mechanical, chemical, and process issues. I quickly learned there was so much more to working at CP&L and in the power industry. Our product is so vital to life. I fell in love with the sense of purpose I got coming to work every day, knowing that I was making a difference and that our product had a real impact.

At Duke Energy, our purpose is to power the lives of our customers and the vitality of our communities. Throughout my 30 years here, I have seen our employees volunteer with their communities, teach children about electricity at schools, and support vulnerable customers working to provide for their families. Seeing those efforts firsthand is something that I love about our company.

I've had 20 different roles at this company. I've done a little bit of everything, so I feel perfectly suited to running each and every aspect of our business, providing reliable and affordable service to our customers.

EP: What is your vision for Duke Energy, particularly as the energy landscape continues to rapidly evolve?

HS: My vision for Duke Energy is simple: We want to continue to operate as the premier electric company, with a reputation for reliable and affordable service for our customers. We want to be the company that people want to work for, where they can build meaningful and prosperous careers and feel empowered to make decisions that serve their communities.

We put customers first in everything that we do. We're ensuring reliability while serving our customers at the lowest possible cost. We are a company that's there for customers, both when a storm hits and when times are good.

We are mindful of the vast array of stakeholders out there, including regulators, politicians, large customers. We want to be known as an honest broker that contributes to energy policy discussions while looking for ways to make the communities and the states we serve better through economic development.

Finally, we strive to be a company that investors believe in and trust to deliver results and value—that they want to be invested in for the long term. With the demand growth that we're seeing, we're blessed to serve some of the fastest-growing states in the country. We are prepared for this moment, serving our customers and meeting this dynamic growth.

We are working directly with stakeholders and our states, and we're doing some great things. Earlier this year, we announced a contract with GE Vernova that will allow us to reserve gas turbines, which will allow us to move quickly and meet this explosive growth. In June, we announced the largest economic development project in the history of North Carolina, partnering with Amazon Web Services on a data center campus in Richmond County. It's a $10 billion investment that will create 500-plus jobs. Particularly in a rural community, that's going to have a huge impact.

EP: You’ve been outspoken about Duke Energy’s storm response work. Last year, Hurricane Helene’s destructive winds and catastrophic flooding devastated the Carolinas and several other states that you serve. What can you share about Duke Energy’s response and recovery efforts following Helene and how that informs your work today?

HS: We had quite the fall last year. We had three storms back-to-back-to-back: Debby, Helene, and Milton. All hit Florida, and all moved up the coast into the Carolinas. Helene, which was the most destructive of the three, hit all seven states that we serve. We saw 3.4 million outages during Helene and 5 million across the three storms combined.

I'm so proud of our team and how they responded to all these storms, particularly Helene. No one could have imagined the destruction that we saw in western North Carolina and upstate South Carolina. I grew up in Asheville, N.C., so it was personal for me to see the destruction, to think about 18 feet of water coming down the valley, washing out our substations, our poles, our homes, and our cars. It was just so devastating. In upstate South Carolina, there aren’t very many trees left from that storm. It seemed like every one of them was toppled last fall.

I joined our teams on the ground soon after the storms passed. It was heartbreaking to see some of the sites where, as a kid and as a teenager, I used to drive around. Seeing the destruction where my dad worked, where I set up my first bank account when I was 5 years old—it was very impactful to us.

We have a mantra here at Duke Energy that everybody has a storm role. So, when something like this happens, all 26,000 people at the company get behind it and work tirelessly, sometimes 16-plus hours a day, to make sure that we're getting the lights back on for our customers. That’s what really helps them find a sense of normalcy to start rebuilding.

The Duke Energy Foundation also did a tremendous job supporting our local communities—supporting food banks, many of which were washed out by floodwaters. We partnered with these communities that we've been a part of, in some cases, for more than 100 years, making sure they rebuilt and rebuilt well. We've been at it for the past year, because this work doesn't end when you get the lights on.

EP: Following the storms, Duke Energy replaced 16,000 poles, 13,000 transformers, and more than 9 million feet of wire. That’s a tremendous amount of work that your team undertook.

HS: It was unbelievable. We had to move poles in with helicopters, because roads were washed out. The amount of wire that we replaced would have been long enough to stretch from Charlotte to Denver.

And, in a lot of these impacted areas, the level of damage was just something we had never experienced before. Roads were completely washed out. Crew quarters didn't have running water, because Asheville did not have water for almost two months. We made it a priority to serve our lineworkers and our employees on the ground, making sure they had what they needed to be successful in their restoration.

EP: What can you share about the grid enhancements and broader resilience work that Duke Energy is leading now?

HS: I always say that the grid is the eighth wonder of the world. It is truly an engineering marvel in how it handles the puts and takes of the system—how it serves customers and handles extreme weather, particularly during hurricane season but also during ice season.

We've invested $70 billion to upgrade the grid across our service territory. We are installing smart devices, replacing wooden poles with concrete and metal poles, building flood protection around our substations.

We're also continuing to invest in technology. Our self-optimizing grid technology is something we've been focused on—I call it the GPS for the grid. When something happens, it's able to reroute power around the issue, saving many, many hours of customer outages. Last year alone, we avoided 1.5 million outages by quickly rerouting power.

We plan to invest more than $100 billion in our grid during the next decade, continuing to strengthen it, make it smarter, and help us meet demand growth. We're all in on making sure that eighth wonder of the world continues to operate reliably and affordably for our customers.

EP: How do you and your team think about balancing the investments that are needed today with maintaining affordability for customers? And, how are you discussing this with customers?

HS: : Affordability is front and center on every customer's mind. A lot of folks are struggling to make ends meet. We've always focused on reliability and affordability as we meet our customers’ needs, and it's no different now. We always look at what is the most reliable solution—but also what is the lowest-cost way we can deliver that reliability.

We continue to look for other opportunities to support our customers and lower their bills. Earlier this year, we worked with our partners in Washington to ensure that the $500 million in tax credits earned by our nuclear plants—which are safe, reliable, and cost effective—flow directly back to customers annually to help offset investment.

We're also focused on working with data centers and other customers with substantial energy demands. We are making sure that these large loads pay their portion of infrastructure investments, so that work doesn’t drive up bills for residential customers.

And, we spend a lot of time focusing on our vulnerable customers—those that have the greatest financial need. We distribute more than $130 million per year in federal and local assistance to help customers pay their bills, and the Duke Energy Foundation works directly in our communities to help vulnerable customers working to make ends meet. Electricity is a vital part of everybody's life.

EP: Duke Energy is a key driver of economic development in your service territory. How are you meeting growing energy demand while supporting and creating new opportunities for your communities?

HS: We are truly blessed to serve the communities that we do in the Southeast and Midwest. They are some of the fastest growing regions in the country. We have added more than 200,000 customers two years in a row, and we are on pace to do so again this year.

A lot of people are migrating here. We also have a lot of manufacturing facilities going in, and plants and data centers are expanding. It feels like everywhere we turn, there are opportunities to add data centers. We are focused on moving quicker, working with customers, and meeting the moment.

We are truly at the front and center of economic development. We will help create more than 160,000 jobs on an annual basis, based on our investment plan going forward. That activity will generate more than $130 billion in labor income and $370 billion in overall economic impact.

EP: “Calm is contagious” is one of your mantras. What does that phrase mean to you, and how does it influence your leadership style?

HS: I wish I had made that up myself. I stole it from the Navy Seals. That is their mantra as well. Calm is contagious because, when you're on a mission, you don't need people to be nervous. You don't need people to overreact. You want to be in lockstep. You want to have clarity of thought as you're making decisions. I think that's a core leadership principle here at Duke Energy.

We're in a high-stakes industry, and we have to have clear thinking, sound decision making, and effective action, particularly during a storm or when we’re under pressure. We need to stay calm, involve all stakeholders, talk to customers and regulators, and make sure our employees have a voice. That empowers everybody to come up with the right decision and avoid the bad decisions. “Calm is contagious” is something I've always subscribed to in my career, and I think it serves us well.

Leading a Proactive, Nimble, Impactful Association: Q&A With EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 15:48:00 +0200

This summer, EEI welcomed Drew Maloney as its new president and CEO. Maloney has spent the past 30 years at the cross-section of politics and policy.

He previously served as president and CEO of the American Investment Council (AIC), where he built a reputation for effective industry advocacy and strategic leadership. Prior to that, he was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Legislative Affairs.

Maloney appeared on the Electric Perspectives podcast to discuss his priorities for EEI; the electric power industry’s commitment to providing reliable, affordable energy for customers nationwide; and how the industry is strengthening America’s energy dominance.

Electric Perspectives (EP): During your first few months in your role, what are your first impressions of the work underway at EEI and with its member companies?

Drew Maloney (DM): This is a tremendous time to be involved in the electric power industry. I have been impressed with the amount of work underway, and the commitment to energy policy, here at EEI.

Member engagement is one of the unique values that EEI has, and members are really engaged in policy discussion.

An example of the commitment our members have to the customers they serve is the annual EEI Emergency Response Awards. What some of these members have done for disaster relief in their communities is just amazing. In a matter of days, they've rebuilt millions and billions of dollars of infrastructure that was impacted by storms, wildfires, or extreme weather. This kind of response—and this type of commitment to communities—really stands out for our members.

EP: What led you to EEI, and how will you leverage your background and expertise as EEI and its members engage in policy discussions?

DM: When I started my young career as a staffer on Capitol Hill, energy was one of the first areas with which I was involved. I was working for a lawmaker from Mississippi, and I distinctly remember Southern Company and Entergy coming into our offices to educate me on energy policy.

Ever since, I've had a fondness for energy. I later ended up working for an oil and gas company and am now leading EEI. This is the culmination of my policy background—understanding how Washington works and how to navigate that to achieve outcomes that help our members serve their customers in a reliable, affordable way.

EP: What insights can you share about cutting through the noise in Washington and working with our partners on Capitol Hill?

DM: Washington has become a very noisy place. It requires you to stay focused on what your message is and to repeat your message, because so many other people are out there with their own messages.

A lot of people make the mistake of being too complicated in their messaging. You really need to focus on your one pager.

The other thing to remember is that you have to build champions to achieve the legislative outcomes that you want in Washington, and those champions aren't always built in Washington. EEI’s secret sauce is that we build those champions in every community across America. That's how you are ultimately successful in advancing policy goals.

EP: Things also change quickly in Washington. How are you making sure EEI is ready to engage and to create opportunities for changing the conversation?

DM: I've given a lot of thought to what makes a trade association successful. In today's very complex and noisy environment, you have to be very proactive, very nimble, and very impactful. That's the culture that I want to build out at EEI.

We have to be ahead of the curve. In the current construct, you could have state policies, federal policies, or engagement on Capitol Hill switching on a dime. As an organization, you have to be able to act quickly.

You also need to create a “surround sound” supporting your advocacy. It used to be that you just had a team of lobbyists that would advocate on your behalf. Today, you not only need that team of lobbyists—you need support from third-party advocates. You need partners out there who are supporting you.

You have other trade associations working with you. You have a social media plan. You have research. You have all these other items out there that complement what you’re doing. You have to make sure they’re all working in concert to deliver the message and deliver the value and the advocacy that you need.

You have to be a results-oriented organization. That’s exactly what I intend EEI to be. I can already see, as we’re responding to different needs with the Administration, how we’re being proactive and how we’re being nimble. That’s how you get the impact that you want here in Washington.

EP: Earlier this summer, you attended the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, which was hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA). What did you think of the event? How were attendees thinking about the role that electric companies play in these conversations?

DM: We are at a unique moment in time, with unprecedented growth in the energy sector. You have the reshoring of manufacturing that's requiring more energy. You have AI and innovation requiring more energy. You're seeing electrification—whether that involves cars or homes—raising demand for energy.

We have a critical role to play, and we are playing that critical role to meet demand. What that event allowed us to do is highlight the investments we're making and show the partnerships we're forging in the private sector to deliver power in a reliable and responsible way.

EP: Was it encouraging to see participation from President Donald Trump?

DM: Yes, and there was an incredible turnout. We also had Gov. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was there. It really showed a bipartisan breadth of support for innovation and for energy. We also had several of our Pennsylvania members in attendance talking about the investments and commitments they're making to drive innovation and economic activity.

EP: EEI recently published its annual Financial Review, which detailed the industry’s financial performance during the past year. What are your key takeaways from the report?

DM: What stood out to me is the scale of investment planned in the years ahead. We’re projected to invest more than $1.1 trillion into energy infrastructure across America during the next five years. And, I actually think that number could be conservative.

That demonstrates that we are a partner for local communities. We're a partner for the government. We are working with a spectrum of stakeholders to meet energy demand in our communities while prioritizing affordability for customers, for small businesses, for farmers, all while meeting our nation’s growth and innovation needs.

EP: Earlier, you mentioned the importance of strategic communication and storytelling in Washington. How did you think about these priorities at AIC, and what do you think can be applied to your work at EEI?

DM: A great example of an opportunity for EEI would be the Emergency Response Awards, highlighting what our member companies have done in their communities to respond to natural disasters—or partnerships that we have with different groups that enhance or demonstrate our customer solutions.

Every industry is challenged with getting their story out, especially in Washington, where everyone is trying to tell their own story. You just can't tell your story often enough, and that’s what we’re going to focus on.

I want to improve our storytelling. I want to tell our stories more often. I want to be louder about it. I want to make sure that the stories we're telling are being told in the communities that our members serve. Then, we need to translate those stories in Washington, because these are great stories. We're great community partners, and we need to be better about highlighting our stories.

EP: For many years, EEI’s tagline has been Power by Association^SM. What does that concept mean to you as you think about delivering value to EEI’s members?

DM: EEI’s CEO engagement is unique. Our member companies want to see their message and their policy successful here in Washington. What EEI's mantra—“Power by Association”—means is that we can accomplish a lot more by working together. When the most successful companies in Washington can come together with one single voice, they are so much more effective.

As a former government worker, having worked on Capitol Hill and in a previous Administration, I would go to trade associations when I wanted to get a view on energy or financial services. They represent the collective voice, and it's easier for a policymaker to go one-stop shopping as opposed to piecing together the views of different member companies.

When we as EEI come in, we bring member companies, and we bring one unified voice. That is a real value add that we have at EEI.

EP: Switching gears, you serve as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Meridian International Center. You and your wife established the Klein-Maloney Fellowship for Women in the Sciences at your alma mater, Randolph-Macon College. What more can you share about your philanthropic work and life outside of EEI?

DM: My wife and I met in college. She's a very accomplished scientist at Johns Hopkins University. She studies women's health, and she noticed a need for more women going into scientific fields. We decided to create a fellowship at our alma mater, encouraging women to perform research projects during the summer that we fund.

It's very exciting for her and for me, as well. We're the parents of two daughters, so we're committed to making sure that they have a path forward in life. We thought it was important to give back, because our college was instrumental in our lives.

The Meridian International Center’s global diplomacy work also is very important. While most of our activities at EEI are focused on domestic markets, what happens overseas and the trends that you see internationally are important and ultimately influence what happens in the United States.

I have always been interested in that sort of work, and it helps make me a better advocate who has a better grasp on what's happening in other regions of the world that may influence what we do here at home.

EP: During EEI 2025 in New Orleans, you mentioned that your first job was a sheep and poultry farm worker. Did you learn any lessons in that role that still guide you today?

DM: You have to get up early to finish your chores on a farm. I'm glad that, today, I don't have the same chores that I did when I was a young 4-H and FFA member. But, that sort of work does teach you responsibility early on.

I grew up in a rural part of Virginia, and I've lived in Washington, D.C., for most of my adult life. I appreciate having that perspective, understanding the challenges faced by people on a farm where I grew up. I have a better understanding of what and how to communicate with different audiences, because I feel like I've lived in different places.

I really do treasure growing up on a farm, raising sheep, going to the county fair. It was a lot of fun, and I wish my kids had that same opportunity.

Resilience and Renewal: 20 Years of Progress Since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 16:36:52 +0200

Like many of you, I have strong emotions about the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its impact on the city we call home—New Orleans. I remain in awe of nature’s raw power on that fateful day and deeply sad about the tragedy brought by the storm to so many. Considering Katrina, and its equally terrifying counterpart, Hurricane Rita—which struck the Louisiana/Texas border just a few weeks later—I’m also inspired by how our recovery showed the power and resilience of the human spirit and what determined people coming together can achieve.

Then, as now, New Orleans was the home to Entergy’s corporate headquarters. Thousands of our employees and their families lived in the places hardest hit by Katrina. I’m honored that our employees met the challenge head on, from those working at our generation plants and headquarters to those restoring power at Entergy New Orleans, our local operating company. Many of them helped the region recover even as they suffered their own personal losses.

The lessons learned after Hurricane Katrina made us a stronger, more customer-focused company, and to this day, we know that progress requires dedication and power—for homes, businesses, communities, and our lives. The spirit of that day endures in our vision statement, “We Power Life,” as we channel those lessons into the work that we do every day, even 20 years later from that impactful time.

Today, we’re a leader across our industry and in our hometown. Our utility workers are nationally recognized for storm response. In fact, during a major storm anywhere in the country, there’s a good chance Entergy will be called on for expertise and support.

We are a leader in corporate giving. For the 10th year, Entergy was named to The Civic 50, the Points of Light's prestigious annual list that recognizes top companies for employee volunteerism and community investment. In 2024 alone, we contributed $4.3 million to more than 100 New Orleans nonprofits.

And, we are a leader in economic development, collaborating to help Louisiana secure major new investments in the data center, liquefied natural gas, steel, and petrochemical industries. Earlier this year, we served as founding partner for the Super Bowl 59 Host Committee, contributing millions of dollars to host this major event that brought more than $1.25 billion in economic impact to our state, region, and city.

We continue our work in close collaboration with our regulators and communities as we build energy infrastructure that makes the grid stronger and more resilient for years to come—an energy grid designed to withstand the harshest conditions. That work balances affordability, reliability, and sustainability on behalf of all our customers.

In New Orleans, the City Council recently approved Phase 1 of our proposed resilience plan, which includes strengthening more than 3,000 structures and upgrading more than 60 miles of electric lines.

The Louisiana Public Service Commission also approved the first phase of those efforts, which includes 2,100 incremental Entergy projects across the state. By reinforcing our grid ahead of severe weather, Louisiana customers will save an estimated $1.2 billion in storm costs.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved an investment of $137 million in projects to strengthen the Southeast Texas power grid, reduce storm-related outages, and save customers millions in restoration costs for decades.

And, while we are making these needed investments, we are mindful that 40 percent of our residential customers live at or below the poverty level. That reality is part of each business decision we make in New Orleans and everywhere we serve. As a result, we continue to maintain some of the lowest electric rates in the country and work hard every day to keep bills as low as possible.

Twenty years on, the lessons of Katrina endure, and the resilience of this community continues to inspire. New Orleans remains our home as we work for everyone and honor our commitment to safely serve our city and the region. The people of Entergy are optimistic about the future, ready for anything, and striving to lead the way to a brighter future for all of us.

Read about how Entergy restored more than just power at entergy.com/Katrina20.

Drew Marsh is Chair and CEO of Entergy.

EEI’s Drew Maloney: Permitting Reform to ‘Unleash America’s Electric Companies’

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 20:45:45 +0200

EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney on Tuesday wrote to Congressional leaders urging them to advance siting and permitting legislation that would “help end needless litigation, ensure reliability at the lowest cost, and fuel economic growth.”

“Electric companies are focused on building new generation and transmission projects quickly and without unnecessary delays and costs,” said Maloney. “Current siting and permitting processes—and the protracted litigation they often entail—can stop projects in their tracks or add years to deployment timelines, saddling customers with needless costs and slowing economic growth.”

Speaking on behalf of America’s investor-owned electric companies, which serve more than 250 million Americans, support more than 7 million jobs across the country, and plan to invest more than $1.1 trillion during the next five years to power economic prosperity, Maloney called on Congress to:

Streamline the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to ensure speed and certainty for NEPA reviews and set reasonable bounds for legal challenges. Passing the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act introduced by U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Rep. Jared Goldman (D-ME) is a necessary first step.
Strengthen and extend nationwide permitting under Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 404/Rivers and Harbors Act Section 10. Codify and expand this already working permit program.
Speed up and focus state water quality certifications under CWA Section 401. Center these certifications on direct discharges and establish appropriate timelines for state action.
Right-size the scope of the National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 to both ensure historic preservation and the ability to grow and deploy new infrastructure.

Permitting reform is slated to be a key topic on Capitol Hill in the months ahead, with a U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Environment Subcommittee hearing on permitting reform under the Clean Air Act scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Reform would “unleash America’s electric companies,” Maloney wrote, voicing support for “bipartisan, common-sense reforms to achieve energy dominance, win the AI race, and allow electric companies to meet increasing energy demand reliably and affordably.”

Scroll down to read Maloney’s full letter to lawmakers.

Delivering a Reliable, Secure, and Affordable Energy Future With Pepco Holdings President and CEO Tyler Anthony

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:39:35 +0200

On a recent episode of the Electric Perspectives podcast, Pepco Holdings President and CEO Tyler Anthony discussed Pepco’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the energy grid through infrastructure investments like the Capital Grid Project and how the company is building a workforce that will support the rapid growth of electricity demand from artificial intelligence (AI) and data centers.

Following is an abbreviated writeup of Anthony’s interview with EP, lightly edited for length and clarity. To catch up with other recent interviews, visit electricperspectives.com/podcast.

Electric Perspectives (EP): Tell us a little bit about your background.

Tyler Anthony (TA): I've spent more than three decades in the energy industry, with more than 20 years in nuclear and 15 years on the transmission and distribution side of the business. That perspective has shaped how I approach this role at Pepco Holdings, where we serve more than 2 million customers across Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and here in Washington, D.C., including some of the country's most critical government and institutional facilities.

We take that responsibility very seriously at Pepco. It's an honor to serve this area. Our mission is to deliver safe, reliable, and affordable power to these communities, and that includes ensuring continuity for the institutions that keep our region and our nation running.

We're doing all of this at a time when the energy landscape is undergoing, frankly, unprecedented change. In the last five years, we've seen more transformation than we had in the previous 50. From the rapid growth of data centers and electric vehicles to the impacts of climate change and evolving customer expectations, our grid is under more pressure than ever.

At the same time, exciting opportunities are emerging. We're seeing a resurgence of interest in clean, baseload generation like nuclear. I'm looking forward to talking more about how we're responding to surging demand, especially from areas like AI and data centers, how we're investing in grid modernization to prepare for what's ahead, and how we're building the workforce needed to power this transformation in a way that's equitable and lasting.

EP: The rapid growth of AI and data centers is accelerating grid transformation. At the same time, the industry is navigating rising electricity demand and extreme weather events. How is Pepco developing long-term plans to power its communities in the face of all of these sometimes-competing dynamics?

TA: We're at an inflection point. The convergence of AI, data center growth, electrification, and extreme weather is transforming the energy system faster than anything I've seen in my 30-plus years in the industry. As an example, battery storage at scale in the United States is poised to more than double during the next two years and will close out 2026 at nearly 65 gigawatts (GW). When you put that in perspective, it's a rapid rise from the 17 GW in the first quarter projected for 2024. A gigawatt is roughly equivalent to building an entire nuclear power station.

At Pepco, we're focused on energy security as older baseload resources that operate 24/7 retire and new energy resources come online. We've retired all the fossil generation in New Jersey. We've just retired the last fossil plant in Delaware in December of last year. That just means the need for renewables will continue as we build these larger baseload, 24/7 resources.

We also are advocating for market and policy reforms that ensure large-scale users like data centers pay their fair share, and that customers aren't left shouldering the costs of rapid transformation. Both Pepco and Exelon Corporation support co-location of data centers with energy generation. We see that as a key part of the solution, but it has to be done responsibly. We need to ensure that it doesn't drive up costs for residents and small businesses while also helping position the United States to lead in the global race for AI.

This is all about national security. And, it's about striking the right balance between growth and accountability, innovation, and equality. As long as we're working together—electric companies, policymakers, regulators, as well as our partners in labor in our communities—we can solve these issues and continue to advance improvements to the grid. I can't stress enough the importance of partnerships.

This moment calls for urgency but also discipline. We can move fast and still do it the right way.

EP: Can you tell us more about Pepco’s Capital Grid project?

TA: I mentioned the importance of partnerships. The Capital Grid project pulled all of our regional partnerships together to essentially set a foundation with our stakeholders to put a $1.6-billion investment in the future of energy in Washington, D.C.

It's going to serve as a springboard to our long-term strategy to enhance the energy grid. The project was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our employees to work on something that is transformative for our customers, our communities, and our partners. It essentially puts 230 kilovolts 25 feet into the ground across the entire District of Columbia, increasing capacity and replacing aged infrastructure.

The Capital Grid project started in 2016, and we're quickly coming to its conclusion.

EP: Exelon, which is the parent company of Pepco, recently announced a $50-million charitable contribution to help customers in need of financial assistance across its network. Can you tell us about Pepco's role in this program and how it will help customers?

TA: This is one of the reasons I'm so proud to work for Exelon. We spend a great amount of time in our communities, and that builds a level of trust. What we've seen across the different jurisdictions, as supply costs have increased, is that our customers’ bills are increasing.

Exelon and companies like Pepco asked ourselves: What more can we do? How can we be part of the solution? This was a step in that direction—to say to our customers, ‘We're here for you.’ We're part of the broader community. It's very important that we show up when our customers are in need in any way that we can. This is another step in that direction—to build that trust with our community and our customers.

EP: What can you tell us about your focus on ensuring customer bills are as low as possible?

TA: This is probably the top issue facing our industry, facing Exelon, and facing Pepco. We're taking it very seriously. Our relief fund is a big step in the right direction. However, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes as we try to drive costs down.

There are four areas that we're focused on currently. One is reforms on the supply side with the PJM Interconnection, looking at how we keep dispatchable resources affordable and available for customers.

The second is our internal costs, looking at how we keep these as low as possible and get the most out of every dollar we spend.

Third, we're working to educate customers. In our customer portal, customers can get weekly and daily updates on the energy they're using, how it compares over time, and how much they're spending. This keeps them more active, because nobody wants a surprise bill. In Washington, D.C., where temperatures can get close to 100 degrees this time of year, more energy will go toward running air conditioners. We have to keep customers informed and help them manage their energy.

Our fourth and final area of focus relates to our regulators and our partners and includes energy efficiency programs, energy efficiency audits, what we're doing around rate structure for low- to moderate-income customers, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and federal programs, and how we’re connecting all of this to customers.

E-ISAC's Michael Ball: GridEx and Building Resilience by Testing to the Point of Failure

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:44:28 +0200

As the new leader of the Electricity Information Sharing Analysis Center (E-ISAC), I come into the role with a sense of enthusiasm and energy. Not only do I get to continue the mission, vision, and focus I had in my previous role at Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE), I also get to work with another exceptional and highly respected team. I see nothing but potential as we build on the E-ISAC’s historic successes—one of which is GridEx, the largest grid security exercise in North America.

Hosted every two years by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the E-ISAC, GridEx was launched in 2011. Hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have participated. GridEx simulates the response and recovery from a coordinated attack on critical infrastructure and is designed as a decentralized, distributed play exercise. Organizations that take part can scale their own participation up or down to meet their unique objectives while coordinating their response with external partners. This year, GridEx VIII (to be held November 18-19) promises to be another major step forward in advancing industry-wide preparedness and resilience against evolving cyber and physical security threats.

Although I have been with the E-ISAC for a relatively short time, I already am struck by the scale and scope of the exercise and the level of industry and government planning, collaboration, and coordination that goes into staging this important event.

In my previous role, I participated in all seven exercises. I always saw them as an opportunity to exercise at scale and to test and continually strengthen our resilience. While GridEx is only one of many exercises that entities take part in, its unique flexibility is an asset and provides a broader view across industry, government, and stakeholder perspectives.

And, importantly, it serves as a call to action to engage and build relationships across those groups before a real event occurs. Planning and engagement include working with federal government partners, such as the U.S. Department of Energy, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity—organizations that would be instrumental in responding to a national-level crisis.

Of course, the real impacts of any attack are realized in local communities, making strong relationships among the investor-owned electric companies, electric cooperatives, public power entities and municipalities, local government, and emergency services vital to recovery efforts. GridEx promotes bringing these organizations together to build and strengthen relationships, as participants work together to enhance our collective resilience.

I firmly believe that the E-ISAC’s role in building and coordinating this exercise is about continuously advancing the resilience of our industry. Every exercise should move the needle forward, challenging our plans and capabilities and identifying opportunities to strengthen and improve, because that is the real benefit. At the end of the day, we cannot prevent everything, but we can reduce the likelihood and impact of physical and cyber attacks—and we can ensure that the partnerships and processes are in place to effectively respond and recover.

Participating with BHE in the past provided a valuable perspective and shaped my thinking on how participants should approach the exercise. I believe the aim should be to challenge existing plans, degrade resources, and test assumptions to the point of failure—it is at the point of failure where the lessons are really learned. Effective exercises using challenging scenarios and the resulting lessons learned are what lead to measurable improvement for each participating organization.

The E-ISAC publishes its own Lessons Learned Report following each GridEx, which is posted on the E-ISAC website. A major outcome of the 2023 exercise was the need for the electric sector to improve the resilience of its communications systems. Through document reviews and interviews with subject matter experts, the E-ISAC developed a full report with extensive recommendations for the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council.

The E-ISAC also developed two communications references: an in-depth case study on the unique communications challenges encountered during Hurricane Helene in North Carolina; and a Resilient Communications Technical Crosswalk document, which serves as a quick reference for comparing different resilient communications technologies currently in use across the grid. These references, which are available on the E-ISAC website, are provided to help members as they improve their crisis communications plans and elevate their communications technologies.

Enhanced accessibility was another recommendation identified during GridEx 2023. As a direct result, the E-ISAC has expanded participation options for the upcoming exercise to make it even easier for smaller organizations and first-time participants to get involved. To facilitate their participation, two new formats have been introduced this year:

GridEx in a Box: A streamlined version designed as a functional exercise, ideal for smaller planning teams or organizations with limited resources.
GridEx Tabletop: A flexible, discussion-based format designed to be “plug and play” with a slide deck and a facilitator guide.

With more than 300 organizations already registered, GridEx VIII is an opportunity to strengthen internal response capabilities, build relationships across the industry and with other sectors, and help enhance the overall resilience of the bulk power system. More information and registration details are available on the E-ISAC website.

Michael Ball is senior vice president at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing Analysis Center.

Hurricane Preparedness Symposium Highlights Power of Partnerships

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 16:29:09 +0200

In July, representatives from EEI, CenterPoint Energy, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Entergy, Florida Power & Light, Southern Company, and TECO Energy traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with federal lawmakers and their staff for the third annual Congressional Hurricane Preparedness and Recovery Symposium.

The symposium showcased the vital role of industry-government partnerships and mutual assistance networks. The event also emphasized the electric power industry's commitment to disaster preparedness and recovery, highlighting how technological advancements enable faster, more efficient responses as lineworkers and first responders restore power and hope to impacted communities.

During the event, electric companies showcased their disaster preparedness and resilience plans and tools, including:

Dominion Energy’s grid upgrades that are enhancing resilience, including automatic sectionalizers that help restore power more quickly when outages occur.
Duke Energy’s grid modernization plans, including investments in weather-resilient power poles, smart grid technologies, and unmanned aerial systems and helicopters to monitor the grid.
Entergy's Damage Assessment Collecting Tool, which streamlines the damage assessment process and allows field assessors to access online maps to relay the exact location of where repairs need to be made.
TECO Energy’s lineworker equipment, which highlighted the difficult task lineworkers face every day as they maintain, repair, and upgrade critical energy infrastructure and restore power after extreme weather events.
Florida Power & Light’s drones, which optimize grid assessment efforts and allow crews to gain visibility into hard-to-access sites.

Power of Partnerships

The event's fireside chat, which featured American Red Cross Vice President for Disaster Programs Jennifer Pipa and EEI Senior Vice President for Energy Security and Industry Operations Scott Aaronson showcased the vital role of partnerships and mutual assistance networks across sectors.

“Electric companies are critical to national security and critical to health and safety. We appreciate the support of our government partners, and our mantra is to be better today than we were yesterday—and better tomorrow than we are today,” said Aaronson.

“When things occur, what we do is look to the entire network [of regional American Red Cross organizations] and ask each one of them to put forward their volunteers, so that we can bring them together and then deploy them down to the disaster area. It's the exact same kind of mutual aid assistance model [as the electric power sector],” Pipa said.

U.S. Representatives Troy Carter (D-LA) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), co-chairs of the Congressional Disaster Preparedness and Recovery Caucus, emphasized the importance of disaster preparedness and partnerships that support recovery efforts.

“These storms, high winds, and high waters, they don’t know zip codes, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation,” Rep. Carter said. “They are equal opportunity havoc wreakers. We thank you all for your partnership, and we stand ready to support you.”

Disaster preparedness and recovery requires “absolute partnership,” said Rep. Moskowitz, noting that the Caucus supports the electric power industry and emergency management officials.

To learn more about how EEI’s member companies respond to extreme weather events and other disasters, visit EEI’s website.

EEI Financial Review: Electric Companies to Invest More Than $1.1 Trillion to Power Economic, Energy Security

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 21:57:29 +0200

EEI on Wednesday published its 2024 Financial Review, a wide-ranging report showcasing investor-owned electric companies’ strong financial footing.

EEI member companies invested a record $178.2 billion last year to make the energy grid smarter, stronger, more dynamic, and more secure, according to the report. This was the 13th-consecutive year of record capital investment for EEI member companies, with more than $30 billion allocated to adaptation, hardening, and resilience projects to strengthen the nation’s transmission and distribution infrastructure for all customers.

“Importantly, EEI member companies are projected to make similar investments of more than $1.1 trillion between 2025 and 2029, creating millions of jobs and supporting local economies across the country,” EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney said in a statement. “As always, we remain committed to keeping customer bills as low as possible as we work to deliver the reliable, secure electricity that is enabling innovation and enhancing the energy leadership of the United States.”

EEI member companies are continuing to invest to support growing electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence and data center expansion, industrialization and the reshoring of manufacturing activity, and the electrification of the broader economy. The sector is the most capital-intensive in the U.S. economy, and these investments support local jobs, empower communities, and drive economic development.

The report also showed that the industry’s average credit rating at the parent company level remained at BBB+ for the 11th-consecutive year, having increased from BBB in 2014, among other financial metrics.

The electric power industry accounts for at least 5 percent of U.S. GDP and supports more than 7 million jobs across the country. Its financial health is critical to unlocking the capital necessary to build new critical energy infrastructure of all kinds.

Visit eei.org to read through the report.

Saluting Our Nation’s Lineworkers

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 22:39:00 +0200

On July 9, industry and labor leaders and representatives gathered at the Rayburn House Office Building to honor the brave men and women who help maintain America’s energy grid and power our nation. The Lineworker Appreciation Day Reception, held ahead of the annual National Lineworker Appreciation Day on July 10, celebrated workers’ commitment to service and dedication to their communities.

Representatives from the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), and Pepco Holdings thanked the more than 150 members of Congress who cosponsored resolutions honoring lineworkers. The resolution was championed by U.S. Representatives Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), and by U.S. Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV).

Those at the event also saluted lineworkers across the country, including those in attendance from Pepco (members of IBEW Local #1900) and Entergy (members of IBEW Local #2286).

“These brave men and women are the face of our industry. They are essential to keeping the lights on for the customers and the communities we proudly serve,” said EEI President and CEO Drew Maloney. “They're the first responders who head towards danger when others are moving away and work around the clock to restore power.”

Maloney also commended lineworkers for their role in helping advance EEI member companies’ collective vision for a safe, reliable, and secure energy future.

IBEW Utility Director Drew Stover recounted the life of Henry Miller, a union organizer, lineworker, and the first president of the IBEW, who died on July 10, 1896, while restoring power in Washington, D.C. National Lineworker Appreciation Day is observed on July 10 to honor his legacy.

“He would be proud that there has been so much progress—not just in safety conditions, but in the IBEW’s partnership with management and with elected officials to bring about those changes,” Stover said. “You all meet every challenge and literally power America.”

NECA CEO David Long thanked EEI and the IBEW for their partnership and emphasized efforts to improve worker safety. “We’ve been able to reduce accidents and deaths on the job, and we’ll continue to have an impact, because we want to make sure that each one of you goes home every day,” he said.

Pepco Holdings President and CEO Tyler Anthony thanked IBEW Local #1900 leaders for their partnership on workforce development programs, as well as the lineworkers in attendance for working long days and in challenging conditions to ensure reliability during recent storms and a severe heatwave. “These lineworkers put their skills to work every day, and they are committed to maintaining and improving critical grid infrastructure,” he said.

Be sure to #ThankALineworker today and every day for their unwavering dedication.

EEI Welcomes Drew Maloney as New President and CEO

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 16:02:39 +0200

Drew Maloney started today as the new president and CEO of the Edison Electric Institute (EEI).

Maloney joins EEI from the American Investment Council (AIC), where he served as President and CEO since 2018, building a reputation for effective industry advocacy and strategic leadership, including efforts to promote investment in American energy production and critical infrastructure.

Prior to leading AIC, Maloney was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to serve as the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Legislative Affairs, where he worked on issues including tax policy and energy infrastructure investment policy.

“As AI transforms our industries, manufacturers return to our shores, and daily life becomes more electrified, the strength and resilience of America’s energy grid is more critical than ever,” said Maloney when he was announced as EEI's incoming leader earlier this year.

“EEI’s member companies make up an innovative and dynamic industry, and I am excited to work with them to lay out and execute policies to support critical infrastructure investment, accelerate the deployment of domestic energy sources, and keep energy affordable and reliable for customers. I am confident that, working with the Trump Administration and Congress, we will advance and strengthen American energy independence, national security, economic prosperity, and global leadership.”

Read his full bio here.

Highlights From EEI 2025

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 22:50:09 +0200

EEI 2025 Highlights—Electric Perspectives Podcast

Dive into part one of the EEI 2025 highlights series on the latest Electric Perspectives podcast episode, featuring EEI Chair Calvin Butler, president and CEO of Exelon; Entergy Chair and CEO Drew Marsh; and Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Phillip May.

Congratulations to the 2025 Edison Award Winners!

Edison International and Southern California Edison are winners of the domestic Edison Award, and Fortis, Inc. has won the international Edison Award.

During EEI 2025, EEI interim President and CEO Pat Vincent-Collawn presented the 97th Edison Award, the electric power industry's highest honor.

The award is selected each year by a panel of former energy industry executives in recognition of distinguished leadership, innovation, and contributions to the advancement of the electric power industry.

Learn more about this year's winners and finalists.

Committed to Resilience: A Q&A With Entergy's Drew Marsh

Mon, 26 May 2025 19:40:00 +0200

Electric Perspectives (EP): How has customer demand evolved during your three years as Entergy CEO and in the nearly three decades that you have been with the company?

Drew Marsh (DM): The demand growth that’s taking place across the country and in Entergy’s service area is unlike anything we have seen in recent history—and, in some ways, ever.

Not only is the need for electricity at an all-time high, there’s also an explosion of economic activity in the Gulf South that is bringing new opportunities, new industries, and new customers to the region we serve. It is an exciting time to be leading Entergy. We’re in a unique position to respond to several favorable trends—including technological advancement and the buildout of data centers, the onshoring of industrial and manufacturing activity, increased demand for clean energy, and electrification throughout the economy.

I am proud of our work to develop a customer-led plan that will drive continued growth, reliability, and resilience in the years ahead. Through 2028, we plan to invest $37 billion in critical energy infrastructure, including generation, transmission, and distribution. We’re also building new natural gas infrastructure across our service area, with regulatory approval pending on a series of combustion turbine plants in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas that include accommodations for carbon capture technologies. We need to continue to embrace new technologies and to lead with innovation when it comes to powering the lives of our customers.

What has not changed for Entergy is our customer and community focus. For more than 100 years, we have been committed to serving our customers and to keeping their energy costs as low as possible—which is especially important in our region, with 40 percent of our residential customers living at or below the poverty line.

It’s our responsibility to balance building and strengthening the energy grid of the future with the needs and realities in our communities. We do this in a number of ways. Last year, Entergy launched the Leading Energy Affordability for All Task Force, which works with external partners to ensure our customers benefit from the $1.1 billion in grants, rebates, and funds available across our service area, including home energy rebates. While each of our Entergy operating companies has unique regulatory requirements for offering support through energy efficiency and demand response programs, we are united in our efforts to provide reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean energy to the customers and communities we serve.

EP: You mentioned your region’s industrial growth and new data center customers. What do you see as the key drivers of interest and investment in Entergy’s service territory?

DM: There are a number of natural advantages along the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River. We are home to the largest industrial base in the United States. People all over the world are looking at the United States for investment opportunities, and our access to global markets matters for our industrial customers—as does our ease of access to ports, pipelines, rail lines, and domestic markets and supply chains.

Low energy costs and abundant energy transportation have long been drivers of economic activity in our region. They’re part of the reason why Meta is investing $10 billion to build a 1,500-megawatt (MW) data center in Richland Parish, La., why Amazon Web Services is dedicating $16 billion to a 650-MW data center project in Madison County, Miss., and why Hyundai Motor Group is planning to build a $5.8-billion steel manufacturing facility in Donaldsonville, La.

In our conversations with these customers, we discussed how Entergy offers benefits to them through our vertical integration and deep ties to our communities. We’re able to convene diverse groups of stakeholders when speaking with new customers, bringing elected officials, community leaders, and local vendors to the table. This is the power of partnership, and the aligned vision across all parties involved helps bring new jobs and dollars to the states we serve. The economic impact to our communities is significant.

Speed-to-market matters, particularly to our data center customers, and we’re able to collaborate and move quickly and comprehensively to bring new opportunities to our communities. Our customers also benefit from Entergy’s diverse energy mix. Modern natural gas accounted for 43 percent of our generating capacity last year—with carbon-free generation sources, including nuclear energy and a growing portfolio of renewables, accounting for nearly 25 percent.

Entergy has 1,600 MW of renewable capacity in service and brought more than 700 MW of solar online in 2024 alone, with the goal of advancing an additional 5,000 MW through 2028.

Many of our customers have their own emissions reduction goals, and our diversity of generation makes us a valuable partner that can provide reliable and affordable service.

In January, Marsh joined Entergy's executive leadership team to ring the New York Stock Exchange's closing bell.

EP: Building a secure and weather-resilient grid has become one of the industry’s top priorities. How are the hardening and resilience initiatives that you are leading at Entergy helping to protect your customers and communities?

DM: Much of Entergy’s footprint sits along or close to the Gulf Coast. While the geography offers unique advantages, it also makes us susceptible to hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other severe weather events.

The energy grid we operate today was mostly built decades ago to a different standard and expectation than today’s modern life. That means it’s up to us and our government and regulatory partners to maintain and build a reliable and resilient grid for our customers with current weather patterns in mind.

Last year, Entergy Louisiana launched a five-year, $1.9-billion resilience plan that will see more than 2,100 projects aimed at hardening Louisiana’s energy transmission and distribution infrastructure. In January, Entergy Texas received approval for the first phase of a three-year, $137-million effort to reduce storm-related outages and to harden the Southeast Texas grid. Similar efforts in Arkansas, Mississippi, and throughout our region demonstrate our commitment to ensuring customers have access to power when they need it most.

Across our service area, we have invested more than $10 billion during the past five years to strengthen our transmission and distribution infrastructure, and we plan to make similar investments of $16 billion through 2028 to further support reliability and resilience.

Just last year, we received accelerated resilience approvals from our regulatory partners in Texas, Louisiana, and in New Orleans, specifically, that exceeded $2 billion. That allowed us to move forward with 73 distribution hardening projects and another 11 transmission projects. Some of these projects were in large economic hubs like New Orleans, but others were in more sparsely populated rural and coastal communities.

This work ranges from standard blocking-and-tackling efforts like hardening poles against high winds to integrating self-healing grid technologies that enhance our communication capabilities and allow us to restore power more quickly or to avoid outages altogether. We also ensure that all new substation structures and rebuilt infrastructure along the coast can withstand wind gusts of up to 150 miles per hour, as well as storm surge flooding.

I’m particularly proud of a 230-kilovolt transmission line that we completed in the Greater New Orleans area in 2022 that runs across the Mississippi River. The line and the towers that support it went from development to energization in less than one year—a significant accomplishment—and are capable of withstanding winds of up to 175 miles per hour.

EP: August will mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and large swaths of Entergy’s service territory. Entergy spent years leading the rebuilding and restoration efforts. How have you seen the industry’s perspective on extreme weather change over time?

DM: Hurricane Katrina was a defining moment for our industry and our company. An estimated 1.1 million of our customers were impacted by Katrina—effectively one third of our service area. Roughly 90,000 square miles of the Gulf Coast was devastated by the storm, and much of New Orleans was submerged by floodwaters and storm surge that, in some areas, eclipsed 15 feet. More than 1,000 people lost their lives during Katrina, and it remains one of the most catastrophic storms ever recorded.

I’d been with Entergy for seven years prior to the storm, and I vividly remember our employees and crews—many of whom were personally impacted by Katrina—working day and night during and following the storm, first to lead response and recovery efforts and later to support a long and strategic rebuild. It was a true display of human resilience and heroic work in the face of horrific conditions, and it was essential to bringing back our communities by powering schools, grocery stores, gas stations, businesses, and homes.

I take pride in knowing our work helped turn the Gulf Coast into one of the nation’s greatest comeback stories in recent memory, and I know just how much work went into getting us there. Since that time, Entergy has invested billions of dollars into building weather-resilient infrastructure and hardening our grid to withstand Mother Nature’s worst.

Recovery from a storm like Hurricane Katrina does not happen overnight. However, our customers, industries, opportunity, and hope returned to the region, and the Gulf South today is the envy of much of the country and the world.

We’ve been tested plenty of times during recent years, including by Hurricanes Francine and Beryl just last year and by Ike, Harvey, Laura, Zeta, Ida, and many others in years prior. Our team captures lessons learned from every storm and every restoration effort as we work to improve customer outcomes and harden our infrastructure against future threats. We were proud to receive our 50th EEI Emergency Response Award earlier this year, recognizing the dedication and excellence of our power restoration workers during and after Francine.

“I take pride in knowing our work helped turn the Gulf Coast into one of the nation's greatest comeback stories in recent memory…”

EP: Can you discuss the culture that you’ve instilled at Entergy during your time as CEO?

DM: Our vision at Entergy is: “We power life.” That includes, but extends well beyond, the essential power that we provide for our customers and communities. It means we actively pursue economic development opportunities to improve the quality of life in the communities we serve. It also means we provide our employees with competitive compensation, opportunities for professional development, and work that makes a difference. And, it means we support our communities through a variety of philanthropic and advocacy efforts.

We are committed to upholding a system of shared values that guides our interactions with customers, employees, and other stakeholders. These values reflect the acronym STAIR: safety, teamwork, always learning, integrity, and respect. This serves as the backbone of our workplace culture and allows us to deliver long-term, sustainable value for every stakeholder on our path to becoming the premier electric company.

At Entergy, we also adhere to what we call our Code of Entegrity. This isn’t just a set of rules for employees—it’s an embodiment of our collective commitment to ethical conduct, fair business practices, and steadfast integrity. In all our interactions, we prioritize honesty and transparency, and we know that commitment starts from the top down. All our employees, myself included, are expected to demonstrate behaviors like making our customers more successful, continuously seeking improvement, collaborating and sharing knowledge, being accountable for results, and recognizing and rewarding outcomes.

It’s these sorts of commitments that have shaped Entergy into the institution that it is today. Earlier this year, we were honored to be named to Fortune Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies list and the JUST 100 rankings by JUST Capital and CNBC, recognizing the top 100 companies in the United States for serving customers, employees, communities, the environment, and other stakeholders. It’s validating to receive this recognition, and it’s rewarding to see the impact that a strong culture has on our employees and our communities.

EP: You mentioned service to your communities. Service is foundational to Entergy as a company and to the industry as a whole. Can you share more about your community engagement strategies and how you give back in the areas that you serve?

DM: Giving back to those we serve is in our DNA, and we’ve aligned our corporate social responsibility and philanthropic efforts with the significant needs of our region. I mentioned that 40 percent of those we serve live at or below the poverty line. About half of our 3 million customers have a combined household income below $60,000 per year.

Through strategic partnerships with our community advocates, we implemented a range of initiatives aimed at addressing poverty, promoting education and workforce development, providing financial assistance to vulnerable customers, improving our communities, and caring for the environment.

Since 2018, we’ve delivered more than $100 million annually in economic benefits to our communities through philanthropy, volunteerism, and advocacy. These efforts come through in a number of ways. When temperatures soared last summer, we donated $3 million to help low-income customers become more energy efficient and save money on their bills. Our Beat the Heat program helped our most vulnerable customers receive bill payment assistance, cooling fans, energy efficiency kits, home weatherization improvements, and support from our community partners.

Employee engagement has been critical to our impact as an organization. Entergy employees contributed more than 122,000 volunteer hours last year to a variety of local organizations working to make a meaningful difference and improve the quality of life in our communities. Our legal department alone contributed more than 4,900 hours of community service, collaborating with EEI and the Pro Bono Institute to organize EmPOWERING Pro Bono Day, offering customers pro bono legal assistance on a range of issues.

Additionally, our focus on supporting education and workforce development is critical to our communities—and to our industrial customers, who are bringing new opportunities that demand specialized skillsets. Through our Power of Prosperity program, we support Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and students through academic scholarships, facility grants and endowments, workforce development programs, internship opportunities, and access to resources and financial assistance.

Last year, we announced a 10-year, $20-million commitment to elevate and empower HBCUs and their students across Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. The Entergy Charitable Foundation also issued a $2-million grant to Jackson State University to develop a cybersecurity workforce training hub, which will help prepare students to fill the critical security positions that will be vital to our industry’s success as we move forward.

EP: You joined Entergy 27 years ago as an associate in strategic planning and special projects and subsequently advanced through the company. What advice would you give young workers today who may aspire to be among the next generation of energy leaders?

DM: It’s an inspiring time to be in the energy industry—electrification is on the rise, new industry demands are becoming a reality, and we’re facing more natural disasters than ever before. Thirty years ago, when I began my career at Entergy, the excitement was different but also there. For those considering a lifelong career at an electric company, I’d say: Never become comfortable in what you do. The environment will always evolve. The job will change, but the criticality of what we deliver requires a steadfast passion. It’s what brings me great joy in coming to work every day—deeply respecting what we do for our customers and communities, and complete admiration for my fellow teammates who show up day after day to keep the machine going.

We believe that a top-performing, highly skilled workforce that draws employees from a wide variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives allows Entergy to build a stronger team and enables us to better serve our customers. By creating a culture where everyone is given the tools, resources, support, and opportunity to contribute and thrive, we will reap the benefits for all our stakeholders of an engaged and empowered workforce—supported by a network of local suppliers—to deliver energy for a better future.

Powering and empowering the people in our region is one of the best ways Entergy can contribute to an improved quality of life in our communities.

“The job will change, but the criticality of what we deliver requires a steadfast passion.”

EP: Throughout your career, where have you looked for advice or inspiration?

DM: I have found advice and inspiration from many diverse places in my career. I have been privileged to have tremendous leaders and peers who taught me about our business, risk, and people. I have drawn inspiration from unconventional sources, like my children’s elementary school teachers on something as simple as how to make meetings more effective or timely.

I have had terrific partners outside of the company who have taught me how to navigate tricky projects or manage transformative initiatives. My family has taught me about the importance of community, how to think about what the community is experiencing, and how it might impact my coworkers.

And, I read a lot, so I pick things up from books, as well. I really value the notion that I can get ideas from anywhere. That gives me the ability, and sometimes the permission, to engage the world while also thinking about what I do professionally.

Reliability, Resilience, and Customer Affordability Top of Mind as Industry Gathers in New Orleans

Fri, 23 May 2025 17:30:59 +0200

Committed to Resilience and Reliability

EEI member companies know that a secure, resilient energy grid is our nation’s first line of defense against extreme weather and other threats to America’s energy security. It’s why our members have invested more than $1.3 trillion over the past decade to enhance our critical energy infrastructure—and will commit more than $200 billion this year alone to make the grid stronger, smarter, cleaner, more dynamic, and more secure.

Our industry faces rapid demand growth, a shifting policy and regulatory landscape, evolving customer needs, and a wave of technological innovation that is changing the way we do business. Yet, our commitment to resilience and reliability remains constant. As we reflect on last year’s devastating storm and wildfire seasons, we know that keeping the lights on and our customers and communities safe will be paramount as we head into the summer months.

That’s one of the reasons I find it fitting that our industry’s leaders will be joining government and privatesector partners in New Orleans for EEI 2025, our annual conference and thought leadership forum. New Orleans is a beautiful and vibrant city that exemplifies resilience and knows as well as any the catastrophic potential of Mother Nature.

This upcoming August will mark 20 years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans. The magnitude of the storm captured attention the world over, and it prompted electric companies, city planners, federal and state officials, volunteers, charitable organizations, and others to come together to carry out one of the most extensive rebuild and recovery efforts in U.S. history.

As an industry, we take great pride in sharing resources and information. What we learned from Katrina and the storms and events that followed is the power of partnership. It takes all of us working together to strengthen community resilience and to prepare for and respond to the impacts of events that threaten reliability.

It’s why we engage in year-round resilience, restoration, and business continuity planning and why we continue to make strategic and significant investments in new technologies and critical adaptation, hardening, and resilience initiatives. Our customers depend on reliable access to electricity and on safe and swift restorations when outages do occur.

We’ve seen the benefits of these efforts across the country, particularly last year when Hurricanes Helene and Milton tested our industry’s storm response and mutual assistance capabilities. The storms struck two weeks apart along the Gulf Coast of Florida, leaving catastrophic damage in their wake as Helene carved into Georgia, the Carolinas, and beyond and as Milton cut across the Florida peninsula.

The storms collectively caused more than $113 billion in damage, and, yet, we saw that areas that had made significant investments in weather-resilient infrastructure fared better during the storms and had shorter restoration times when outages occurred.

That’s also been true in New Orleans, where Entergy helped lead efforts to build back stronger in the aftermath of Katrina. After the storm cut power to one-third of the company’s service territory, damaging 3,000 miles of transmission lines, 30,000 miles of distribution lines, and 17,400 distribution poles, Entergy made extensive investments to keep the community safe during future extreme weather events. The company worked with regulators and community leaders to develop a plan to enhance grid resilience.

Those grid hardening efforts continue under Entergy Chair and CEO Drew Marsh and have helped New Orleans build back stronger than ever. They also are helping to increase reliability while helping to keep customer bills as low as possible over the long term, minimizing the repairs needed following storms and mitigating the lost economic activity that results from prolonged outages.

Ready for the Demand Arriving Now

Resilience will be a featured topic of conversation during mainstage keynote discussions, breakout sessions, and programming in The Hub at EEI 2025. I am eager to hear from Occidental President and CEO Vicki Hollub, Oracle CEO Safra Catz, technology thought leader and former AMD President Victor Peng, and the rest of our distinguished lineup of speakers—and for them to learn more about the work underway in our industry.

And, while attending the New Orleans conference will be among my final duties as EEI’s interim President and CEO, I am confident that the industry is well-positioned to deliver an energy grid that is reliable, weather-resilient, responsive, and ready for the demand arriving now.

I am proud to pass the reins to Drew Maloney, who will begin his work as EEI’s new president and CEO on July 1. Drew assumes this mantle at an exciting and critical time for our industry, and I am confident that his proven record of navigating some of the nation’s most complex policy landscapes will be invaluable as our industry works to meet growing demand for electricity and to deliver the reliable, resilient energy future that our customers expect and deserve.

Energy Demand and Extreme Weather Dominate Discussions at NARUC Winter Policy Summit

Tue, 15 Apr 2025 17:04:10 +0200

Left to right: Chris Harris, International Representative, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; Eliecer Viamontes, President and CEO, Entergy Texas; Harry Sideris, President and CEO, Duke Energy; Michele O'Connell, President and CEO, Orange & Rockland Utilities; EEI Chair Maria Pope, President and CEO, Portland General Electric; and Chris Womack, President and CEO, Southern Company.

In late February, leaders from EEI and America’s investor-owned electric companies joined state regulators, technology leaders, government officials, consumer advocates, and other industry and regulatory stakeholders at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ (NARUC’s) annual Winter Policy Summit in Washington, D.C.

“The purpose of this meeting is to assemble a group of key stakeholders to discuss the opportunities and challenges before us and how we can meet the demand that we are seeing in the electric power sector,” NARUC President and Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore said during the summit’s opening session.

Throughout the four days of programming, more than 2,100 summit attendees heard about the considerable energy demand being generated by data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies; physical, cyber, and weather-related threats to America’s critical energy infrastructure; and how electric companies are working with the regulatory community to power Americans’ lives and businesses and to keep customer costs as low as possible.

“NARUC was borne out of a noble idea, that the regulatory policies that were taking shape in Washington, D.C., couldn’t effectuate policy over such a large country,” said NARUC Executive Director Tony Clark. “What happens here directly affects affordability and the reliability of our system.”

Diverse Stakeholder Group Joins Demand Roundtable

New to the NARUC agenda this year was a Demand Roundtable discussion. The session convened more than 20 state commissioners, electric company executives, and technology leaders from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Walmart to discuss demand needs and to ensure industry and regulators are moving in lockstep to bring new technologies, generation, and transmission and distribution to the energy grid.

“We need speed, flexibility, and a willingness to be creative to find solutions for our customers,” Exelon Corporation Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Innocenzo said during the discussion, noting the industry’s dual priorities of meeting new customer demand while prioritizing service for existing customers and communities. “We have an obligation to maintain a grid that is safe, reliable, and affordable. We do not want to overburden any segment of our customers.”

To open the session, participants were polled on a series of questions to gauge their near- and long-term concerns about meeting demand growth. Nearly 1 in 3 representatives from electric companies and state commissions said they were very concerned about increasing demand from data centers, while 54 percent said they were somewhat concerned. Nearly 1 in 4 said significant upgrades are needed to existing infrastructure in their service territories to support projected growth.

Participants also were asked to list the biggest challenges that they see related to data center demand, and several common answers emerged: timelines involved with building new infrastructure, supply chain concerns, tariffs and cost allocation, and risks associated with first-of-a-kind technologies.

“There is substantial first-mover risk. Some of the investments we’re talking about are larger than entire companies,” said Duke Energy Senior Vice President for Pricing and Customer Solutions Lon Huber. “You can’t bet your company on these sorts of technologies. You can’t bet your service territory. There has to be some kind of partnership to support these technologies and ensure that electric companies aren’t solely bearing the risk.”

Unity of Effort and Message in Mutual Assistance

The first full day of the summit began with a discussion about mutual assistance and the power of partnership, moderated by Southern Company Chairman, President, and CEO Chris Womack and featuring International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers International Representative Chris Harris; Orange and Rockland President and CEO Michele O’Connell; EEI Chair Maria Pope, president and CEO of Portland General Electric (PGE); Duke Energy President Harry Sideris; and Entergy Texas Chair, President, and CEO Eliecer Viamontes.

“It is so important that we are starting this meeting with a discussion about mutual assistance,” said Womack. “This clearly demonstrates the role of what we do, the value of what we do, and it speaks to the value that we bring to customers and communities.”

Sideris and Viamontes discussed an active 2024 hurricane season, which included Hurricane Beryl’s impacts on Texas and Hurricanes Helene’s and Milton’s devastation to the Southeast. Sideris, whose hometown of Asheville, N.C., saw catastrophic damage from Helene, noted the storms impacted Duke Energy’s service territories across all six states that the company serves. He said the storm “caused the most damage that we’ve ever seen,” and he praised the army of mutual assistance workers who deployed to North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to assist with storm response and recovery.

“There was a tremendous response from the industry, and it’s really in the DNA of our lineworkers and our companies. We had employees who lost homes and family members and came to work the next day to restore power,” Sideris said.

Viamontes stressed the importance of proactive communication with local officials and customers during storm response efforts, noting that Entergy Texas actively engaged with local media and held daily calls with elected officials during Beryl.

O’Connell was one of several on the panel who urged the regulatory community to support efforts to harden the grid and to make it more weather resilient, citing Orange and Rockland’s investments totaling $1 billion during the past 10 years in undergrounding overhead lines and installing submersible equipment.

Pope emphasized that wildfire mutual assistance is in many ways different from traditional storm response efforts but that some principles touted by other panelists still apply. She highlighted the use of early detection AI cameras and the increasing use of public safety power shutoffs in the West as efforts that potentially can mitigate catastrophic wildfires, as well as the need to engage with local officials to promote transparency.

“I never thought I’d know the chiefs of police in as many of our jurisdictions as I do today,” Pope said. “Unity of effort and unity of message are a hallmark of what we do in this industry. Mutual assistance demands leadership and coming together, not pointing fingers.”

‘Power Shifting to the States’

EEI Executive Vice President for Regulatory Affairs and International Programs Phil Moeller spoke during a series of events that EEI hosted on the sidelines of the summit, including at the EEI Women’s Breakfast. Moeller delivered remarks before and after a panel discussion about the industry’s commitment to reducing serious injuries and fatalities, moderated by Con Edison Vice President of Environment, Health, and Safety Venetia Lannon. The panel featured International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Fourth District International Vice President Gina Cooper, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations President Liz Shuler, Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Chair Katie Sieben, and Pepco Holdings Chief Operating Officer Tamla Olivier.

The session featured panelists’ insights on recent trends, strategies to minimize incidents, the introduction of innovative safety metrics, and how a collaborative safety culture can support these efforts. The group discussed how to get at the heart of what causes incidents, how to implement effective reporting structures, and the importance of ongoing workforce training initiatives that help ensure safety.

“Zero incidents for our employees and our contractors, and zero public safety events: That’s always our goal,” Olivier said during the discussion.

Moeller also joined a NARUC Committee on Energy Resources and the Environment session, offering his federal policy predictions for 2025 and beyond.

He saw “an interesting dynamic of power shifting to the states, which we’re seeing through the actions of the Administration and the actions of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chairman Mark Christie.” That power shift, Moeller said, would require states within the same regions to work together more closely to avoid creating patchwork regulatory frameworks.

“That takes time. That takes trust. Putting the effort in to bridge regional differences will be important,” he said.

Moeller also stressed the need for more dynamic rate structures that send better price signals to customers, the importance of customer education and engagement, and the progress that the industry has made on workforce development and skills training initiatives.

“That issue really used to worry me when I served on FERC. I’m more comfortable now that there’s a lot more going on,” he said, highlighting EEI’s work with groups like Veterans in Energy and the Center for Energy Workforce Development.

Left to right: Mark Birk, Chairman and President, Ameren Missouri; EEI Vice Chair Calvin Butler, President and CEO, Exelon Corporation; Steve Fleishman, Managing Director and Senior Analyst, Wolfe Research; Michael Haggarty, Associate Managing Director, Moody's Ratings; Teresa Ho Kim, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan Asset Management; NARUC President Tricia Pridemore, Commissioner, Georgia Public Service Commission.

‘It’s Not Just About Demand Growth’

Several EEI member company CEOs joined NARUC sessions later in the week, including NiSource President and CEO Lloyd Yates, who participated in a fireside chat with Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman Stephen DeFrank. Yates discussed the industry’s emphasis on an all-of-the-above energy strategy and his optimism for hydrogen blending, small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs), and other emerging energy solutions.

“This is a huge economic development opportunity for this country. It’s a huge national security issue for this country,” Yates said. “We have to continue to put resources into nuclear and making SMRs work. We have to blend in renewables. Transmission investments are so important. And, we need more natural gas infrastructure. The energy transition looks different in every state, so you need to do the work and bring everyone to the table in every state.”

Later in the week, Ameren Missouri Chairman and President Mark Birk and EEI Vice Chair Calvin Butler, president and CEO of the Exelon Corporation, participated in a conversation about industry access to capital, joining Wolfe Research Senior Analyst Steve Fleishman, Moody’s Ratings Associate Managing Director Michael Haggarty, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management Managing Director Teresa Ho Kim.

Birk highlighted the need for proactive communication with regulators and members of the financial community, noting that Ameren Missouri regularly hosts power plant and facility tours to help stakeholders understand the size and scale of investments needed.

“If you’re able to show that the projects you’re working on directly benefit customers, and you can show the why, it makes it easier to work with regulators and with investors,” he said.

Butler noted that the electric power industry is the most capital-intensive in the country, with grid infrastructure investments totaling tens of billions of dollars each year. He said telling that story can be difficult sometimes because “we’re investing in things we hope you will never feel, like security.”

“It’s not just about demand growth. It’s about providing a system that everyone in this room can come to depend on. We all need to keep our eyes on the ball and stay on top of that,” Butler said.

Highlights From CERAWeek by S&P Global

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 22:20:22 +0200

Electric companies stand at a moment of “real opportunity to think about serving Americans and building out the grid in a new and different way,” EEI Chair Maria Pope, president and CEO of Portland General Electric, said in March during a keynote session at CERAWeek by S&P Global in Houston.

Pope’s remarks reinforced common themes shared throughout CERAWeek, the annual gathering of thousands of industry, technology, and government leaders from around the world. Demand growth, technological innovation, and evolving policy and regulatory landscapes are changing how electric companies operate, but their focus on serving customers and building out a secure and resilient energy future remains constant.

Each year during CERAWeek, executives from EEI member companies are represented throughout the event’s hundreds of mainstage keynotes, fireside chats, tech talks, panel discussions, and leadership roundtables, and this year was no exception. Pope’s session, and others led by EEI member company leaders, highlighted this pivotal moment for the industry and how electric companies are adapting, innovating, and investing in critical energy infrastructure to better serve customers and keep pace with accelerating demand growth.

“In all my years coming to CERAWeek, I’ve never seen as much excitement around electric power,” S&P Global Commodity Insights Executive Director Douglas Giuffre said during one of the conference’s recap sessions, noting the industry’s and the technology sector’s focus on an “all of the above” energy strategy to meet demand projections fueled by data centers, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the reshoring of industrial and manufacturing activity, and the continued electrification of transportation and the broader economy.

The theme of this year’s conference was, “Moving ahead: Energy strategies for a complex world,” with programming focused on how major changes in domestic and international policy and the rise of new technologies are reshaping the global energy landscape.

Following are highlights and excerpts from this year’s conference:

‘The Demand Is Here Now’

NextEra Chairman, President, and CEO John Ketchum discusses the importance of a diverse energy mix and his company's planned infrastructure investments during a panel discussion. (Photo: CERAWeek by S&P Global)

In recent years, industry and technology thought leaders often spoke at CERAWeek about demand growth in a forward-looking tone, warning that investments will be needed in the near-term to prepare for what’s to come. However, the sense of urgency was clear this year, as AI-fueled data center construction has taken off across the country.

“It’s important we get this right. The demand is here now,” NextEra Chairman, President, and CEO John Ketchum said during a mainstage discussion on the first day of CERAWeek. “We’re in unprecedented times in our industry. We’re seeing a sixfold demand increase during the next 20 years compared with the previous 20.”

Ketchum emphasized NextEra’s all-of-the-above focus, noting the company’s interest in advanced nuclear technology as the seventh-largest nuclear operator in the world—and that the company just came off a record year in which it signed contracts to build more than 12 gigawatts of renewable generation.

He also stressed the importance of meeting this demand while keeping customer bills as low as possible—and the benefits of tax credits and other supportive public policies in pursuit of affordability.

“The tax credits and transferability provisions are so important to meeting demand in a cost-effective way,” Ketchum said. “If these credits went away, not only would we see a generation crunch, but the average American would see a 12-percent price hike. We need to avoid that.”

Later in the week, Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Phillip May stressed that demand growth is being felt all over the country and in areas that haven’t historically been known for their energy demands. Meta recently announced plans to build a $10-billion data center outside of Shreveport, La., and Entergy has worked in recent years to expand and upgrade infrastructure along the Mississippi River, with a new $5.8-billion Hyundai steel plant expected to open in the coming years.

“Massive investments are going to change the economic trajectory of parts of our state forever. Our state hasn’t always seen that sort of thing,” May said. “As we think about how we serve this load, all options need to be on the table, including assets near the end of their lives. We need to figure out how to squeeze out every last bit of economic juice from them that we can.”

‘Innovation Needs to Be Part of Culture’

National Grid CEO John Pettigrew shares his thoughts on AI and the industry's embrace of grid-enhancing technologies to maximize existing critical energy infrastructure.

This demand growth has forced the industry to scrap the concept of business as usual and has emphasized the need for innovation and a willingness to embrace new energy strategies and technologies. NextEra Energy Resources President and CEO Rebecca Kujawa, who recently announced plans to retire in late May, described solidifying innovation as part of the company’s culture during mainstage keynote remarks.

“We have an annual process where we ask everyone in the company how we can be better, lower costs, and unlock revenue. And, every year, I’m amazed by the creativity and ingenuity that comes out of that process,” Kujawa said. “We’ve created $1 billion in annual revenue and cost savings through doing this every year. Innovation needs to be part of culture. You need to be willing to take risks, learn, and continually get better.”

This need for innovation has spurred a wave of industry and technology partnerships, and it has opened the door to new business models. National Grid Ventures, an investment arm of National Grid that supports grid-enhancing technologies and innovative energy solutions, hosted a series of tech talks and demonstrations throughout CERAWeek that highlighted the types of advanced vegetation management, dynamic line rating technology, and AI-powered systems that it invests in.

“The intention behind National Grid Ventures was that it would give us access to the types of technologies and innovations that are over the hill. We can invest in them, grant them access to our networks, and improve our own processes,” said National Grid CEO John Pettigrew, noting the company’s plans to commit $100 million to AI startups to help modernize the grid. “These technologies are allowing us to think about meeting demand in a different way. We need to embrace digital and AI.”

Industry leaders also highlighted innovation in their relationships with government and regulatory partners. Dominion Energy Chair, President and CEO Bob Blue joined a dinner session featuring Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and Commonwealth Fusion Systems Co-Founder and CEO Bob Mumgaard to discuss the world’s first commercial fusion power plant, which currently is under construction in Chesterfield County, Va.

“If this is technology that is proven out, and the financials and operations work, it is something that our company and our industry could deploy at scale,” Blue said of the nuclear fusion reactor.

Blue and others throughout CERAWeek noted the risks associated with building first-of-its-kind technology—with Governor Youngkin saying he didn’t want to be remembered as “the governor that unleashed a small sun on Virginia.” To help mitigate risk, many stressed the need for new partnerships with government and private-sector partners.

“Planning for the energy future is going to require more speed and more creativity,” Southern Company Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Stan Connally said during a CERAWeek breakfast panel. “If we can find many partners in these conversations, that will be a big piece of the roadmap to success. Finding the right balance of safe, clean, reliable, and affordable is what we’re all after.”

‘Technology Is Forcing Us to Rethink Everything’

EEI Chair Maria Pope (right), president and CEO of Portland General Electric, advocates for siting and permitting reform at all levels of government during a panel discussion.

Although renewable energy generation remained a popular topic of discussion at this year’s CERAWeek, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Mark Christie warned during a keynote discussion that the industry’s ongoing need for 24/7 generating resources represented a “rendezvous with reality,” of sorts.

This theme of grounding future-looking projections in the technology, policy, and regulatory realities of today was highlighted throughout the week. Pope noted that, despite the industry’s need for critical energy infrastructure of all kinds, siting and permitting backlogs can add years to project development cycles. She stressed the need for reform at all levels of government.

“Siting is very local, so we need to tackle that at the local level,” Pope said. “And, we have environmental agencies in each one of our states, not just at the federal level. We need to look at where the need is rather than just tweak federal legacy processes.”

Edison International President and CEO Pedro J. Pizarro, meanwhile, highlighted during a panel discussion that the industry is attempting to expand and optimize the grid while responding to a growing and intensifying list of physical, cyber, and weather-related threats.

“The economy will be relying more and more on the grid, so it is so important that we increase the resilience of the grid today and in the future,” Pizarro said, noting that AI can be an essential tool to defend the grid despite the risks that technology poses in the hands of bad actors. “One of our big messages is that grid security is national security. Across the industry, we’re thinking about defense in depth. We’re not pretending we can defend against everything, but we are building multiple layers of defense and making AI front and center in terms of grid design.”

And, AES Corporation President and CEO Andrés Gluski highlighted the unique needs of energy-intensive customers like data centers—and the fact that these facilities can be built, in some cases, in fewer than two years, when timelines to build new transmission and generation facilities can be significantly longer given labor, supply chain, and siting and permitting challenges.

“You’re not going to build a $50-billion data center and have it backed up by something you are 99 percent sure will be available. Energy has to be 100 percent available,” Gluski said. “Most of the interconnection queue is renewable right now, and that’s mostly time to power. If you want a new natural gas plant, it may be four or five years until it’s operational. With renewables, it may be two to three years. Time to power is very different for these customers if you’re talking about the difference of several years.”

Still, industry leaders were overwhelmingly optimistic throughout CERAWeek that they are on track to meet customer needs and that new AI and grid-enhancing technologies will continue to revolutionize how they do business.

“Technology is forcing us to rethink everything. How we operate, how we legislate, how we regulate,” Pope said. “It’s so exciting, because we used to talk about some of these technologies being part of the bulk power system. But, we’re at the point where they’re being integrated into distribution and impacting customers directly.”

Industry leaders and their technology, government, and regulatory partners will discuss these and other trends at EEI 2025, EEI’s annual conference and thought leadership forum, which begins on June 2 in New Orleans. To learn more about the event and to register, visit eei.org/2025.

Edison International President and CEO Pedro J. Pizarro (right) and AES Corporation President and CEO Andrés Gluski (second from right) discuss energy security, innovation, and data center-fueled demand growth.

Extraordinary Times, Extraordinary Potential: A Q&A With Portland General Electric's Maria Pope

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 16:56:38 +0100

Electric Perspectives (EP): Demand growth is creating a need for new critical energy infrastructure of all kinds, setting the stage for what could be one of the most transformational moments for American infrastructure since the years immediately following World War II. How is our industry responding?

Maria Pope (MP): Everything that we do and the way that we work is changing at a dramatic pace.

First, demand for electricity is growing at a rate we haven’t seen in decades. Data centers are rapidly expanding to meet the needs of emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and are expected to consume an extraordinary amount of energy.

When you consider that a search on ChatGPT or another large language model requires 10 times the energy of a traditional search engine, it is easy to understand why. At the same time, more sectors of the economy and more homes and businesses are continuing to electrify.

Second, tremendous federal, state, and private sector resources have been brought to bear to onshore manufacturing and to enhance America’s global competitiveness and security, especially in the high-tech sectors. Since the signing of federal legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, investment in American manufacturing has nearly doubled, according to a report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Third, extreme weather is underscoring the urgent need to enhance the resilience of the nation’s energy grid. Hurricanes, ice storms, wildfires, and other events are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity. In response, electric companies are deploying significant capital and are becoming tech-forward businesses with a renewed focus on innovation.

EEI member companies are bringing new infrastructure, generation facilities, batteries, and countless innovative projects online at an incredible pace. We will continue to strengthen our infrastructure and build a more resilient, cleaner generation fleet. And, we will work to accomplish all of this in a way that is cost-effective for customers.

“EEI member companies are bringing new infrastructure, generation facilities, batteries, and countless innovative projects online at an incredible pace.”

EP: What are you prioritizing during your tenure as chair of EEI?

MP: I am honored to serve on the EEI Board alongside impressive leaders from across the industry. We are working together to advance our enduring value proposition: providing safe, reliable, secure, and increasingly clean energy to the customers we serve, while working to keep costs as low as possible. As I began my term, the Board developed multi-year strategic priorities.

The first priority is enhancing and strengthening grid reliability, resilience, and security. We are facing ever-increasing physical and cybersecurity threats while also managing incredible growth. To respond effectively, we need to increase the speed at which we bring on new generation, accelerate investments in our distribution and transmission networks, and adopt new technologies to enhance the resilience of our systems.

At the same time, we are driving a customer-focused vision and are strong advocates for policy solutions that benefit customers. The Inflation Reduction Act and its technology-neutral investment and production tax credits, as well as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, are powerful accelerators. These policies will help support customer affordability and create millions of jobs during the next decade, and they should be protected.

Our industry must redouble stakeholder education and engagement efforts to preserve these tax credits and other provisions of these laws that are directly benefiting customers. We also must work to secure a repairs fix in the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, prioritize siting and permitting reform, and advance other initiatives aimed at fostering a supportive policy and regulatory environment. Underpinning much of our work is our belief that the investor-owned business model is the most efficient and economical way for our industry to serve customers.

We are continuing to educate policymakers and other stakeholders on our regulatory compact and on the value our model delivers through efficient f inancing of important investments in our national infrastructure. EEI member companies are driving economic growth and are pivotal to national security during this transformational time.

Maria Pope speaks at EEI 2024 with Antonio Neri, president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, on energy demand and the changing technology industry.

EP: Addressing energy security concerns also is a top priority for EEI and our member companies. How is the industry approaching this challenge?

MP: We have a clear responsibility to our customers to ensure reliable electricity, even as we respond to significant demand growth and changing customer needs.

EEI strongly advocates for the continued development of diverse energy resources—including natural gas, renewables, and new and existing nuclear energy—as well as grid-enhancing technologies that support flexible demand and increasing capacity. EEI member companies also are coming together to address resource adequacy concerns.

PGE and our peers in the West have had success balancing the demand and supply of electricity at lower costs to customers by participating in collaborative efforts like the Western Energy Imbalance Market, which delivered more than $6.25 billion in cumulative economic benefits between 2014 and 2024.

For PGE, regional connectivity and cooperation among electric companies enables us to draw on wind resources from Montana, batteries in California, hydropower in the Pacific Northwest, and solar arrays in the desert Southwest. It all comes together to improve reliability and stabilize energy markets.

Addressing energy security and resource adequacy concerns will require significant capital investment. EEI member companies have invested more than $1.3 trillion during the past decade in critical energy infrastructure projects of all kinds, spending more than $170 billion each year to make the energy grid stronger, smarter, cleaner, and more secure.

PGE’s Coffee Creek battery storage facility is one of several new projects that is helping the company improve grid operations by matching available supply to current demand.

EP: How are electric companies using AI and other advanced technologies in their own operations?

MP: Technology is revolutionizing our industry, making us smarter, more efficient, and more effective. We are using technological innovations, particularly AI, to shorten design timelines, accelerate project completions, and optimize complex grid operations.

At PGE, to name one example, we created an “AI Design Review Bot” that has reduced our engineering cycle times twelve-fold. AI is critical as distributed energy resources (DERs) become even more common. AI already is helping to balance the surging demand for power and to enhance grid management.

PGE estimates as much as 25 percent of the power needed on the hottest and coldest days of the year could be supplied by customer-sited DERs—such as solar panels, batteries, and EVs—as soon as 2030.

PGE’s wind resources are bringing geographic and resource diversity to the company’s generation portfolio.

EP: Last year, we saw the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton across the Southeast, in addition to catastrophic wildfires and myriad other extreme weather events across the country. What strategies are electric companies pursuing to mitigate risks posed by these events?

MP: The impacts of extreme weather on lives and livelihoods, local economies, and critical infrastructure are increasing. That’s why all EEI member companies are devoting significant time and resources year-round to prepare for and respond to extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and less predictable.

EEI member companies dedicate more than $30 billion annually to adaptation, hardening, and resilience initiatives to strengthen the nation’s transmission and distribution infrastructure. This includes using innovative technologies like AI-enabled cameras, weather stations, and advanced modeling programs that help companies prepare for and respond to weather-related events, particularly in high-risk areas.

It is worth noting that many of these investments supplement the work of public safety agencies, strengthening communities against a variety of threats. Wildfires also are a growing challenge, affecting more communities across the U.S. each year.

From the southwest to the northeast, there’s a need to do more to prevent wildfires before they happen and to protect affected communities from long-term costs. We need a comprehensive national strategy that emphasizes community protection, wildfire prevention, responsible investment, and rapid recovery.

There is also an urgent need for long-term policy solutions that will require cooperation with regulators, legislators, insurers, public agencies, and many other stakeholders. Wildfires truly are a societal problem that requires societal solutions.

While the challenges of extreme weather are formidable, our industry is in this together. When a major event hits—whether it is a tornado, hurricane, ice storm, or wildfire—we actively support one another through mutual assistance efforts. After Hurricane Helene, an army of more than 50,000 workers from nearly every state in the country deployed to the Southeast to help with recovery and restoration efforts. Just two weeks later, when Hurricane Milton made landfall, mutual assistance crews and resources were redirected to Florida.

These events collectively represent one of the nation's largest-ever mutual-assistance mobilizations, and our industry’s coordination with federal officials and other stakeholders through the Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council was critical to delivering a safe and efficient storm response for impacted customers and communities. Our ability to support each other and work together is one of our industry’s superpowers.

“Our ability to support each other and work together is one of our industry’s superpowers.”

EP: Customer affordability is a central concern for EEI member companies and their customers. What are electric companies doing to help keep costs as low as possible?

MP: Like many industries, electric companies are facing mounting pressure over price increases. When costs go up, people may need to make difficult choices, as they work to pay rent, keep the lights on, and put food on the table.

We have a responsibility to manage our business in a way that prioritizes customers, and we are committed to keeping costs to customers as low as possible. Fortunately, new demand means that, as more businesses and people are connected to the grid, operating costs can be spread out.

Ensuring these savings materialize requires thoughtful work on the part of electric companies and regulators to shape and adjust rate structures. Growth also requires investments in generation, transmission and distribution, and advanced grid technologies, all of which will help minimize costs in the long run.

As these investments are made, we have an important opportunity to drive customer energy efficiency and efficiency in our operations. Customers—understandably—want to know what goes into their bill, and every part of our operations must deliver customer value.

EP: With a new administration and new Congress in Washington, do you see an impact on this industry?

MP: Electric companies create millions of good jobs, power the U.S. economy, and play a critical role in a variety of national and international policy and security priorities.

We’ve always worked with regulators and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels to ensure our industry’s significance is understood and that our economic impact is enhanced by supportive public policy. That doesn’t change when a new administration arrives or political power shifts.

We are committed to engaging with the new administration and Congress to advance public policies that benefit our customers and to address common issues of global economic competitiveness and national security.

We share common interests and will work collaboratively, as we always have, when there are opportunities to better serve the American people with the reliable and affordable energy they need to thrive.

PGE’s AI-driven cameras provide 24-7 visual observation of high-risk fire zones. The company’s ability to detect wildfire smoke and alert a network of 50 public safety partners in real time helps reduce risk and keep communities safe.

EP: Looking out at the rest of 2025 and beyond, what message do you have for EEI member companies?

MP: We know that our customers expect the world’s most reliable electricity, and we know it’s our job to deliver it safely, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The pace of change that we are witnessing is accelerating. I am proud that EEI’s member companies are leading the way and are moving at new and exciting speeds as AI advances; more data centers come online; manufacturing and industrial activity accelerates; and homes, businesses and transportation continue to electrify.

Our customers are counting on us to meet today’s rapidly growing energy needs and to help make America home to the industries that will drive our future. At the same time, we are managing the increasing risks of wildfires and extreme weather; tackling energy security and resource adequacy as demand rises; and investing in a smarter, more flexible, more connected, and more resilient grid. We are balancing these efforts while working to keep costs as low as possible for customers.

As an industry, we have a clear set of priorities. Electricity is vital to our national security and economic competitiveness. Electricity powers our lives. We need a reliable, modern energy system for a modern age. Working together, we can deliver an energy grid—and an energy future—that is reliable, weather-resilient, responsive, and ready for the demand arriving now.

In these extraordinary times, our challenge is to capitalize on the extraordinary potential in front of us. I am confident that we are up to the task. EP

Delivering Power By Association During a Pivotal Year

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 01:12:03 +0100

America’s investor-owned electric companies are in the midst of incredible demand growth and on the cusp of tremendous change. I am excited to be serving as EEI’s interim president and CEO at such a pivotal time, working with the talented leaders at our member companies to build a brighter energy future for all.

Today, electricity demand is growing at its fastest pace in decades, as new technologies and evolving customer expectations are driving rapid transformation. This once-in-a-generation demand growth is creating new challenges for our nation, as well as unique opportunities for our industry to better serve customers and communities and to ensure America is home to the industries, technologies, and jobs of tomorrow. EEI and our member companies are leading the way and are working hard to meet these challenges head-on.

At the same time, we are engaging with a new administration and new Congress on a busy policy agenda. We know that our job of educating policymakers, regulators, and industry stakeholders is more important than ever, and we have developed strategic advocacy plans to advance our priority issues and to achieve favorable results that benefit our customers.

Our efforts are fueled by knowledge that we need a modern energy system for our modern age, particularly as data centers and artificial intelligence technologies, the onshoring of manufacturing, and increased electrification continue to drive energy demand and global economic activity. With a supportive policy and regulatory framework in place, we can build an energy grid that is reliable, responsive, weather-resilient, and ready to meet customer demand today and in the years ahead.

Promoting Supportive Public Policy

We all know that electricity is the energy that powers our increasingly digital economy, and our industry is integrally linked to the success of our nation. As a whole, our industry supports more than 7 million jobs across the country and accounts for at least 5 percent of U.S. GDP.

More than ever, it is vital that public policies support energy security by prioritizing the buildout of more critical energy infrastructure and by allowing electric companies to maintain a diverse, domestic, and dispatchable energy
mix. Natural gas, renewables, storage, and new and existing nuclear are all important parts of this equation.

EEI’s member companies have the expertise needed to build the necessary infrastructure. What we don’t have is time—specifically, time for inefficient government review processes to drag on and on.

We must streamline permitting requirements, align policy requirements, and encourage capital investment to rapidly build out the grid and the other critical infrastructure needed to power data centers, bolster domestic manufacturing, and support the electrification of other sectors of the economy. We also must continue to lead efforts to develop, demonstrate, and deploy grid-enhancing technologies that are helping to bolster grid resilience and get more out of the infrastructure that we already have.

Favorable tax policy is particularly important, and we are engaging with members of Congress and their staff on where and how policies like the energy tax credits are driving innovation, creating new American jobs and economic opportunities, and helping electric companies meet the rapidly growing demand for electricity reliably and affordably. During the year ahead, we will work to protect the energy tax credits, secure a repairs fix in the Corporate Alternative Minimum Tax, and continue to advocate for provisions within the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that benefit electricity customers.

Environmental regulations also remain front and center, and EEI is committed to working with policymakers and regulators to support policies that better accommodate member company fleet transition plans and reflect the challenges of building new generation. We are committed to getting the energy we provide as clean as we can as fast as we can, and we are working to find solutions that drive innovation and the deployment of new energy technologies, allowing our member companies to meet demand growth reliably while helping to keep customer bills as low as possible.

Addressing Wildfire Risk

Among EEI’s priorities this year is advancing a comprehensive national strategy that addresses wildfire risk, with a focus on community protection, prevention, responsible investment, and rapid recovery. The recent fires in Southern California, exacerbated by hurricane-force winds and severe drought conditions, offer a grim reminder of the devastation that these events can inflict. We are grateful for the brave firefighters and first responders who worked around-the-clock to contain the blazes.

EEI and our member companies were actively engaged at the highest levels of industry and government through the CEO-led Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council (ESCC) to ensure that impacted electric companies had the resources and equipment needed for the response, restoration, and rebuild efforts that are essential to the recovery.

The threat of wildfires is a societal problem that requires societal solutions. We are committed to working with Congress to advance legislation that will help mitigate risks and support our efforts to protect the customers and communities that we serve. And, we will continue to work with our partners in Washington to ensure that the ESCC remains the center of gravity, where industry and government come together to strengthen our shared responsibility of protecting the grid against all threats.

The growing frequency and intensity of wildfires and extreme weather events of all kinds reinforces just how important it is to invest in resilient infrastructure and a more weather-resilient grid, as few regions were spared Mother Nature’s wrath over the past year. EEI’s member companies invested more than $171 billion in 2023 alone to make the grid stronger, smarter, cleaner, more weather-resilient, and more secure, and these efforts will continue in 2025 and beyond. Securing our grid against threats both natural and manmade is critically important to the success of our industry, as well as to our nation’s role as a global energy leader.

Leading the Way

This will be a busy year for us all. As the leader of an EEI member company myself, I recognize and appreciate the important work that is underway across our industry on behalf of the hundreds of millions of Americans who depend on us to power their lives. I am also grateful for the high levels of engagement from my CEO colleagues on these and so many other critical issues.

We will face no shortage of opportunities, challenges, and change in 2025 and beyond. What will remain the same is our commitment to delivering a secure, reliable energy future that benefits everyone. Through the Power by Association^SM that EEI represents, we will meet the evolving needs and expectations of our customers, and we will engage with partners in industry and government to ensure we have the infrastructure, technologies, and policies in place to power our economy and our lives for decades to come.

Investing in Reliability and Customer Experience

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 15:19:48 +0100

Electric Perspectives (EP): You assumed your role as president and CEO of FirstEnergy a little more than a year ago. What are your main priorities, and what can you say about your experience leading the company?

Brian X. Tierney (BXT): The past year has been fantastic, and I’m more excited than ever to be here. I was drawn to FirstEnergy because the company was at a point in its business and cultural evolution when it could begin tapping into its strengths and realizing its tremendous potential.

FirstEnergy is a fully regulated, mostly wires-based electric company, with a service area that spans parts of five states in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions. We just completed the last in a series of transactions that raised $7 billion in equity proceeds to strengthen our balance sheet. That means we now have the financial strength to capitalize on the immense investment opportunities in our regulated businesses for the benefit of our customers. This is a key differentiator for the new FirstEnergy: singular customer focus and a strong balance sheet.

My goal is to help FirstEnergy fulfill that potential and become a premier electric company, characterized by a high-performing culture, an excellent customer experience, strong and consistent financials, and being a trusted community partner.

To get there, we built a simple business model grounded in four components: investing in our people and our system, operating safely and efficiently, recovering prudent investments, and financing our regulated utility operations. When we execute this model effectively, it creates a virtuous cycle that drives great results for everyone who depends on us.

Coming into this job, my priorities were to make sure we have the goals, operating structure, culture, and tools to execute on this model and move the company forward. We’re making progress on every component of our business model, and we’re well on our way.

Exelon’s primary focus is leading the clean energy transformation. While doing that, we are focused on helping our communities become cleaner, healthier, and more equitable places to live and to work. We believe it’s our responsibility to ensure a better future for all. This guides me every day in my work as CEO.

“We believe it's our responsibility to ensure a better future for all.”

EP: Under your leadership, FirstEnergy implemented a new operating structure and established four major verticals: distribution in Pennsylvania and Ohio, integrated operations in New Jersey and West Virginia/Maryland, a standalone transmission business, and FirstEnergy’s central corporate arm. Why did FirstEnergy make these changes, and what benefits does this strategy offer?

BXT: FirstEnergy is trusted to deliver a service that is the lifeblood of our communities. We need to perform this job safely and efficiently in a way that understands, respects, and responds to the individual needs of the customers and communities we serve across our diverse five-state footprint. Energy policies across our service area vary widely, so we need to listen, engage, and work with stakeholders on solutions.

Our entire team needs to understand our collective goals and their role in achieving them. They also need to have a continuous improvement mindset, always looking for opportunities to be more efficient and provide better service.

This requires a lot of two-way communication, and focused, local leadership that is accountable for results. To support this, we’ve shifted more decision-making and operational accountability away from headquarters and closer to our customers, regulators, and employees.

Our restructured leadership allows greater execution at the business-unit level, where we have the best insight into what our customers want and what our employees need to perform at the highest level. We’re already seeing success in everything from storm response to regulatory outcomes.

After changing how we manage the company, we needed to adopt new reporting that reflects that change. With four business units—pure-play distribution, integrated, stand-alone transmission, and corporate/other—individual operating companies are no longer split among the segments. This creates greater simplicity and transparency in reporting, as well as accountability in our management.

The right organizational and operating structure is critical to executing our strategy, so getting this in place was a priority.

Brian X. Tierney assumed his current position as president and CEO of FirstEnergy in June 2023, helping the company serve as a leader in building America's energy future.

EP: There are several new faces on FirstEnergy's leadership team, filling out the new organizational structure and helping drive the company's transformation. What traits do you look for in your leaders and employees?

BXT: When I joined the company, FirstEnergy was at a pivotal point in its transformation. The scale of change that has been undertaken by ouremployees during recent years has been nothing short of extraordinary. As a result of their work, we're in an incredible position to achieve our goal of becoming a premier electric company.

To accelerate our transformation, we've added 12 new leaders at the executive level since June 2023. It's leadership's job to engage and energize the organization so that all employees are empowered to bring their best. To ensure strong execution in these critical roles, I look for dynamic individuals with deep experience and a continuous improvement mindset. They must demonstrate strong values, the desire to work collaboratively across the organization, and a proven ability to lead organizations through change while driving results.

Like me, our leaders see a unique opportunity to make a positive impact. They're bringing fresh ideas and building a more inclusive culture—focused on performance excellence—that inspires employees and drives results for our customers, communities, and investors.

This is truly a new FirstEnergy. I'm proud of our progress and excited about our future.

EP: You also have overseen FirstEnergy's Energize365 capital investment program, which will see the company invest $26 billion from 2024-2028 to support grid-modernization efforts. What can you share about this initiative and the importance of investing in critical energy infrastructure?

BXT: We hear a consistent and positive message from state commissioners, governors, and other local leaders: They support prudent and impactful infrastructure investments that help meet reliability standards, enhance the customer experience, and advance state energy policies. This aligns perfectly with FirstEnergy’s strategy to invest and operate the system to benefit our customers.

To accomplish this, we leveraged our long-term transmission investment program and strong balance sheet to build our new capital investment program, Energize365. The program expands our customer-focused investments across both the transmission and distribution system to address our customers’ needs, now and in the future. This includes enhancing system reliability and resilience, preparing for demand growth and electrification, improving the customer experience, and supporting connections to clean energy sources—while maintaining a strong affordability position.

The $26 billion in regulated investments between 2024 and 2028 represents a 44-percent increase over our previous five-year plan. Most of these investments are in formula rate programs that provide real-time returns. It includes increasing annual investments in our transmission and distribution system each year, resulting in 9-percent average annual rate base growth and driving returns for investors.

Through Energize365, we’re enabling the transition toward a more sustainable energy landscape. We’re embracing innovation and investing in the new technologies and tools that support the connection of renewables and distributed energy resources. This is being done at the micro level through individual customer connections and at the macro level through projects like building solar facilities in West Virginia and connecting off-shore wind generation to the grid in New Jersey.

Importantly, we have the flexibility to adjust the plan as projects emerge. This includes competitive transmission proposals we’re submitting through the PJM Open Window planning process.

“We’re embracing innovation and investing in the new technologies and tools that support the connection of renewables and distributed energy resources,” says Tierney.

EP: Late last year, FirstEnergy subsidiaries were awarded more than $800 million by PJM Interconnection for transmission projects that will enhance reliability and accommodate demand growth. With data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) applications driving demand growth projections across the country, what are your expectations for demand growth throughout FirstEnergy’s service territory in the years and decades ahead?

BXT: There are forecasts, including from the Boston Consulting Group, predicting that the data center share of U.S. electricity consumption will triple by 2030. That’s a significant percentage of total consumption—equal to the energy use of approximately one-third of U.S. homes.

We can see the impact of AI and data centers coming, and we’re working on many fronts to prepare. This is a complex and challenging issue.

In the Midwest and mid-Atlantic United States, the concentration of data centers and AI applications is steadily growing. We’re seeing interest in our states where we have retired industrial facilities and former power plants. These sites often have existing transmission infrastructure and are very attractive to data centers.

We’re seeing a dramatic increase in the number of inquiries from data center developers. In 2023, we received 18 load study requests for facilities of 500 megawatts or greater. So far this year, we already have received 66 requests for studies of that size. Keep in mind: These developers are assessing many locations, so it’s not as simple as converting inquiries into future demand.

We were awarded about $800 million through PJM Interconnection to support transmission investment opportunities related to data centers in the Northern Virginia panhandle and Maryland. We continue to participate in competitive planning processes, and we certainly see more transmission opportunity for FirstEnergy as grid operators build capacity to enable demand growth.

We plan to update our demand forecast early in 2025 to reflect the activity we’re seeing in our region. While data centers are increasingly contributing to demand growth, our forecast also will reflect more traditional growth trends. Economic drivers like GDP and employment growth have been positive in our footprint, and we’re seeing the impacts of electrification of transportation and the energy transition as we look ahead.

“We're seeing a dramatic increase in the number of inquiries from data center developers.”

EP: You have built a long and impressive career in the electric power industry, at FirstEnergy and previously in leadership roles at Blackstone and at American Electric Power. In your view, how can the industry attract, retain, and develop the workers and leaders it needs to deliver the future of energy?

BXT: Working in the electric power industry isn’t merely a job. It’s a vocation. It powers lives, and it sustains modern living, economic development, and innovation. For those of us in this field, we take this responsibility seriously.

I think this collective mission of providing the lifeblood of electricity to our customers and communities will continue to appeal to great people who are looking to make a difference.

This is extremely meaningful work that can attract the brightest talent. You need to offer a positive culture grounded in safety and integrity. You need to provide competitive compensation. You need to value growth and development. You need to provide both the challenge and the psychological safety that encourages people to stretch themselves with a continuous improvement and reinvention mindset. You need to create and nurture an inclusive workplace.

To help attract new talent, we recently moved away from an unpaid training program for line and substation workers that limited our pool of candidates. Instead, we’ve introduced a new paid apprenticeship program. Through these apprenticeships, new hires learn foundational skills from veteran instructors. They learn in a classroom, in hands-on settings, and they have opportunities to develop relationships with and learn from seasoned employees. They are paid employees who are actively building their human capital.

This will help us attract the workers we need in a competitive labor market and opens up a great career path for a lot of people. It’s great for expanding the diversity of our workforce and hiring from within our communities.

We also have a strong talent pipeline with colleges, universities, and professional and community organizations to help build awareness of careers in the sector. We have a strong co-op and internship program that offers meaningful and challenging work, professional development, mentorship, and networking opportunities to college students in critical fields. In 2023, we converted more than 80 percent of graduating program participants to FirstEnergy employees, which is well above the benchmark of 57 percent reported by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

To retain talent, we strive to make sure everyone understands and feels the positive impact we have on our customers. Today’s career seekers—particularly young people entering the job market—crave a sense of purpose. And, we’re fortunate in this industry that our work is inherently important.

FirstEnergy's paid apprenticeship programs are helping to develop a skilled energy workforce.

EP: Extreme weather events are having a significant impact on the electric power industry across the country. How is FirstEnergy working to prioritize resilience and prepare for and respond to extreme conditions?

BXT: Protecting the energy grid and providing our customers with reliable power is a paramount issue for FirstEnergy and the industry. Constant vigilance for threats to the grid is essential, and we’re focused on advanced technologies and tools to improve reliability, resiliency, and grid security.

For example, thermal imaging cameras and helicopter patrols allow us to proactively identify and repair damaged equipment. Leveraging machine learning, we’re one of the first companies in the industry to build a new Advanced Vegetation Analytics Tool to help predict and reduce tree-related outages.

We’ve also developed and deployed a state-of-the-art modeling tool that helps us predict the scope of impact and prepare for response days ahead of an extreme weather event. It uses machine learning to develop detailed impact forecasts that help us plan our response. Post-event, its capabilities allow it to automatically evaluate its performance, then train itself to improve future outputs.

Hardening the grid is a significant component of our Energize365 investments. Across our system, we’re installing technologies that enhance resilience through automation, take advantage of our data, and increase operational flexibility. These investments provide grid management solutions and security that can reduce the number of outages and minimize the duration and impact of service interruptions—when they do occur.

We’re also thinking proactively about potential long-term threats. The electric system is at an inflection point. With projected load increases outpacing dispatchable generaiton in much of the country, the affordability and reliability of electricity are at risk.

The industry needs to work collaboratively to address this urgent challenge. We’re working with our peers to engage state and federal stakeholders on resource adequacy concerns, and I urge the industry to make it a priority to safeguard reliability and help manage energy costs.

EP: Throughout your career, who have you looked to for advice and inspiration?

BXT: I've been fortunate to learn from many excellent leaders along the way, both in the electric power industry and on Wall Street. One of the values my mentors helped instill is to relentlessly pursue improvement. They encouraged me to listen and seek feedback, to correct course when needed and to adopt new technologies. I’ve found that there are always opportunities to learn and grow.

The service we provide—and the employees who are the heroes of our industry—inspire me to do my best every day. These men and women are called to serve at all hours, in all weather, in an inherently dangerous field, to provide our customers and communities with the service that enables modern living. I like to say that our strategy is simple, but the work is hard. Their passion inspires me to help make their jobs a little easier, serve our customers with the same dedication, and fulfill our commitments to our communities.

Building a Culture of Perseverance: Steve Young on his 44 Years at Duke Energy

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 20:03:00 +0100

Electric Perspectives (EP): What are some of your proudest accomplishments from your decades of service in the electric power industry?

Steve Young (SY): I was at Duke for 44 years. As I look back on that, I'll just mention a couple of things that stand out to me. At the very beginning of my career, in the early- to mid-1980s, I participated in rate reviews that included nuclear plants. This was a huge effort, as these facilities were new at the time, and getting them built, getting them in service and operating, and working their costs into rate reviews was a significant undertaking. To be part of that was such a rewarding chapter in my career.

The second thing I’ll mention has played out during the past 10 years or so, and that is getting our portfolio to where it is today. At Duke Energy, we had three mergers and acquisitions involving Cinergy in 2006, Progress Energy in 2012, and Piedmont Natural Gas in 2016. I was actively involved in all three of those, and we also divested certain parts of the company, including our merchant generation and international businesses.

To be on the ground meeting new people, discovering new avenues of business, and exploring new ways of doing things was exciting. These moves have helped build Duke Energy into what it is today.

Steve Young joined colleagues from Duke Energy in ringing the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

EP: What are the most important shifts in public policy affecting our industry that you have seen in your career?

SY: When I think about big policy changes in our industry, two developments come to mind. From the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, there was a strong push for deregulation of electric generation. Several laws were passed at the federal and state levels, and a lot of regulatory discussions came from that. You saw generation assets divested to non-regulated entities. That was a huge policy change at the midpoint of my career.

What was learned from that effort is that this business of generating electricity and getting it to customers in a safe, reliable manner is incredibly complex.

The second big policy change that I have seen has been more recent: the movement toward clean energy infrastructure. The desire to move away from carbon-producing generation assets, particularly coal, makes a lot of sense. I think the industry is being very wise about making this transition in a rational way, keeping in mind reliability and customer impact. The pace of the clean energy transition has made sense.

EP: How have you seen Duke Energy’s efforts to deliver benefits to customers evolve, given the technological advancements and policy shifts that took place throughout your career?

SY: When I first started, the industry’s general strategy was to work as effectively and efficiently as possible, and those efforts would take care of customers in and of themselves. We didn’t know a lot about our customers, and we even used to call them “ratepayers.” We didn’t have many mechanisms to get more information, and there wasn’t a lot of communication between us.

The most influential development as it relates to customers has been the rapid development of communication technology. It’s astounding. When we anticipate a storm coming, we can send texts to customers. We can tell them when we think a storm might hit, when an outage might occur, who to call, and what to do. We can share outage maps that tell customers we’re aware of outages, we have crews on the way, and we have an anticipated time of restoration.

And, there have been advances in other technologies like smart meters that allow customers to be more involved. They can now remotely monitor and control energy consumption in their homes and businesses. This has all dramatically changed the way we interface with customers, and you have to be conscious of that. You have to be aggressive about getting resources and information in places in a way that can take advantage of these technologies for customers.

“The most influential development as it relates to customers has been the rapid development of communication technology.”

EP: Under your leadership, Duke Energy developed a new Sustainable Financing Framework. This has paved the way for the company to issue green and sustainable bonds, loans, and other financing mechanisms, which have helped drive investments in clean energy technologies and create opportunities for small and diverse businesses. What can you say about the framework and the difference that it has made at Duke Energy?

SY: I am proud of what we've done at Duke Energy in terms of trying to think about different ways to raise capital. We are a capital-intensive industry. At Duke Energy, we’re raising more than $10 billion each year to build critical energy infrastructure. When you’re building at this scale, you sometimes need to be creative about who you’re reaching out to.

We have embraced the idea of developing green bonds, where the proceeds are utilized specifically for renewable energy resources. That grabs an investor bloc that may not have been looking at our sector solely because they’re focused on renewables. We’ve also looked at financing mechanisms around diversity and inclusion initiatives, where we’re able to show how funds that we receive are benefiting small businesses and minority-owned businesses. That’s another pocket of investors that we can reach.

This work is so important for so many different communities. We’re trying to make sure more targeted groups of investors understand that the funds they invest with us will result in the types of investments that they care about most.

EP: How have you helped foster constructive relationships with regulators and other stakeholders during your career?

SY: For Duke Energy, what we've accomplished in the past several years is a great example of really constructive regulation.

In North Carolina, for example, we’ve seen bipartisan legislation that incentivizes us to work toward cleaner energy production and the retirement of coal facilities—but replacing those coal facilities in a manner that doesn’t sacrifice reliability and keeps in mind customer rate impacts. To get that done, you really need to work with stakeholders, legislators, commissioners, customers, and local officials across your service area to understand the challenges, risks, and benefits. Constructive regulation starts with the education of stakeholders.

And, I am encouraged that most stakeholders really understand the value of electricity and that our economy depends on digital capability, which requires electricity and the production and distribution of safe, reliable, 24/7 energy. That’s not taken for granted as much as it was when I first started in the industry.

EP: You guided the formation of the Business Transformation and Technology unit at Duke Energy, which launched in 2016 to manage the company’s information, technology, and security efforts. What is your perspective on the cyber and physical security threats that our industry faces today?

SY: It's amazing what technological changes have brought to our industry and our economy. Communication technologies, smart meters, and customers’ ability to better understand their energy consumption are all terrific. But, with them comes the risk that bad actors will try to interfere.

The first thing that I did when this area of the company was put under my leadership was take cyber and physical security operations outside of the purview of the traditional information technology department.

Security deserves a much higher profile within any organization. We then went about getting the talent and the people we needed to understand this space and the role that we play in it. We worked with universities, technical schools, and the military on recruitment.

When it comes to security, you need to get the right people, but you also need the right technologies: the firewalls and the tools that allow us to see who is trying to infiltrate our systems and ping our websites. And, despite everything that you may do to prevent incidents, you need to have an action plan in place. You need to think about the communication that you’d need to engage in within the company, with regulators and legislators, and with local officials and law enforcement. You need drills and trainings to ensure readiness if an event ever was to occur.

There is tremendous benefit to all of this technology. We are harnessing it as safely and as best we can, and we are allocating resources to mitigate risk and ensure that we can continue the safe and reliable delivery of electricity.

Physical security is an interesting issue. We always have had intense physical security around nuclear facilities. But, we've had to significantly advance the physical security around other facilities. We are seeing an increase in the number of people trying to damage our facilities, such as transmission substations.

We have amped up security around these facilities, using cameras and other technologies. We also have significantly increased our communication with local law enforcement.

Many of these facilities are in rural or sparsely populated areas, and we are working to ensure a greater presence of law enforcement to keep an eye on things. That’s a relatively new national phenomenon that has come about during the past five to 10 years.

“When it comes to security, you need to get the right people, but you also need the right technologies.”

EP: You joined Duke Energy out of college and rose through the ranks, building an impressive career at the company. Given your background, what perspective can you offer on how our industry can attract, retain, and develop the careers of promising young professionals?

SY: Duke Energy always was a fabulous place to work in my mind. Our industry provides an unquestionably valuable service. We are producing energy, natural gas, and electricity that folks depend on. I like that.

Duke Energy also did a great job of providing different types of opportunities throughout my career. I came in as a staff accountant, and I was quickly tapped to work on rate reviews. That’s not normal accounting work, but I was able to start learning that facet of the business.

I ultimately became the head of the regulatory affairs and rates department, which would not have happened without someone giving me that early opportunity.

Later, I helped with merger integration. That was incredibly valuable to me, as well, and it also was a departure from traditional financial and accounting work. You had to work for your opportunities, but I saw throughout my career that Duke Energy was willing to provide them.

The other aspect of the company and the industry that I enjoyed was the atmosphere of teamwork. A lot of young employees ask me for words of advice, and I always say, “Be a good teammate.” I’ve never done anything alone. You need to coordinate with operating staff, engineers, attorneys, the regulatory teams, the financial teams, the communications teams, and so many other stakeholders. It takes a lot of teamwork to operate these facilities and also invest in our system to serve customers for the future. There is a lot of dynamic interplay, which I enjoyed.

EP: Thomas Edison once said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed always is to try one more time.” How has this idea of perseverance, even in the face of adversity, factored into your career?

SY: If you work this long at a company, there has to be some level of perseverance. I believe Duke Energy Chair and CEO Lynn Good has done a great job of fostering a culture of perseverance. Opportunities aren’t going to fall into your lap. You need to put the work in.

A good example of that is the legislation and regulatory decisions that we have seen during the past 10 years. You can’t just walk into a state capital and say, “This would be a good energy policy for customers. Let’s pass it tomorrow.” It takes years of work, conducting the right education efforts with the right stakeholders. You’ll have bumps along the road, and it takes perseverance and bringing others along to make progress.

This industry is providing a service that is so fundamentally important. It is not a hit-or-miss business. We must do our jobs correctly every day, and Lynn Good has done an extraordinary job of fostering a culture that emphasizes preparing for bumps and keeping at it when we hit them.

Driven By Purpose: John Larsen on the Power of Values-Driven Leadership

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 20:43:00 +0200

Electric Perspectives (EP): What are some of your proudest accomplishments from your decades of service in the electric power industry?

John Larsen (JL): As I look back on my career, I feel a strong sense of pride being part of a company that lives its values and purpose. I was fortunate to have many roles during my career. Each one helped me develop new skills and provided me with opportunities to collaborate with new members of our team.

Our purpose—“serving customers and building stronger communities”—is simple, yet it is very powerful. These six words say so much about the work that we do and the difference that we make. When we live our values and are guided by our purpose, good things happen for our customers, communities, and each other.

As I moved into the role of CEO, I wanted to prioritize my passion for our purpose while charting a course for a sustainable energy future, which we call our Clean Energy Blueprint. It serves as a roadmap that guides our renewable generation strategy, helps to shape our customer-focused investments, creates a healthier environment, and encourages innovation. Our goal is to provide customers with more choice, convenience, and control of their energy future.

I also am proud of our employees and retirees, who are amazing ambassadors for our company and our industry. They live, work, and play in the communities that we proudly serve. It is only through their dedication and passion that we succeed, and their connection to customers is incredible. Simply put, I am proud to say, “I work for Alliant Energy.”

Larsen (second from left) meets with response crews following a derecho that damaged large sections of Alliant Energy's service territory in 2020.

EP: Can you speak to the importance of this customer- and community-first mentality, for Alliant Energy and for the broader industry?

JL: At Alliant Energy, each day starts and ends with the customer in mind. Starting by deeply understanding our customers and their unmet needs, the team at Alliant Energy develops new products and services designed to deliver value to customers. We are focused on powering beyond the challenges of today, thinking about the futures of the communities that we proudly serve.

I am proud of our employees’ dedication, passion, and creative thinking as we shape the future of energy for our customers across Iowa and Wisconsin. Prioritizing customers also is the reason we established our charitable foundation, to support programs in our communities that address hunger and housing inequities, environmental stewardship, workforce development, and community safety and wellbeing services. Creating spaces where people and families can come together and create community through our corporate giving has been a hallmark of our work.

Our industry played an instrumental role during the pandemic in keeping our customers and communities connected with safe, reliable, and resilient energy. When so many elements in the world were uncertain in all our lives, our industry rose to the occasion, just like we do during extreme weather events. We cared for our neighbors and ensured everyone had the energy resources they needed, all while keeping our employees and customers safe.

EP: Alliant Energy has scaled up investments in wind and solar generation and embraced forward-looking emissions-reductions goals as part of its Clean Energy Blueprint. Do you see a connection between the delivery of resilient, clean energy and Alliant Energy’s efforts to prioritize its customers and communities?

JL: The energy sector is quickly becoming an industry driven by customer choice and preference. Building cleaner energy infrastructure, focusing on customer affordability, and investing in a seamless and personalized customer experience are a few of the core strategies our employees are working on each day.

As we developed our approach to diversifying our energy generation resources, we did not want to be driven by policy—instead, we wanted to remain guided by our customers. Putting our customers at the center of our planning enables us to shape policies that make sense for them. We strive to stay ahead and look over the horizon, because I am a firm believer that there is a cost to doing nothing. Sitting idle is not a strategy.

Our Clean Energy Blueprint is helping us diversify our energy generation mix while making smarter investments in our energy grid, including into battery storage systems. Our customers have asked us to keep clean and reliable energy top of mind while balancing the need for affordability, and we’ve heard them. In addition, our investments have delivered sustainable benefits by creating new jobs, providing new sources of local revenues, and fostering economic development.

Being in the Midwest, we are proud to partner with the agriculture community and many farmers across Iowa and Wisconsin. We are working with these groups to bring renewable energy projects to life—delivering economic benefits to our communities while delivering clean energy to our customers.

We know and understand the importance of being good stewards of the land. Serving rural customers for more than 100 years has kept us keenly aware of the need to coexist with our environment. It is one of the many reasons that Alliant Energy is investing in agrivoltaics—the study of crop or livestock production underneath or adjacent to solar panels. We are working with Iowa State University (ISU) and the University of Wisconsin on innovative projects that will advance research in this field.

As an example, one project with ISU near Ames, Iowa, is designed to demonstrate the types of crops that can grow—and thrive—under or near solar panels. This study will examine variables including panel types and mounting heights, and it will give us more information on the connections among energy output, crop production, and impacts on pollinator habitats.

“The energy sector is quickly becoming an industry driven by customer choice and preference.”

EP: You helped lead EEI’s CEO Task Force on Broadband. What role can electric companies play in helping to bring broadband to unserved and underserved communities?

JL: I was honored when Tom Kuhn asked me to lead EEI’s Broadband Task Force. My work on broadband was centered on the second part of our purpose: building stronger communities. I grew up in a small town, and I can recall how important it was to have strong schools, strong community pride, and strong services.

While the internet did not exist in my younger days, the principle of access to services like virtual healthcare, online education opportunities, and innovation with technology is now foundational. It is quite clear that communities need and expect Alliant Energy to help them build stronger communities. Chairing that task force was an easy fit and very enjoyable.

As energy companies with strong connections to our customers and a long history of efficiently constructing essential infrastructure, our industry is well-positioned to help address the middle-mile challenge.

Many companies, including Alliant Energy, have begun investing in technology to enhance connections between electric facilities and devices to make the energy grid smarter, more resilient, and more secure. With proper planning, electric companies can use available capacity on their fiber facility infrastructure—in partnership with last-mile internet service providers and economic development stakeholders—to make internet service more accessible and more affordable, to the communities and customers we serve.

With more than 800 miles of fiber facilities across Wisconsin and Iowa, we have and will continue to partner on mutually beneficial efforts to help connect our communities and customers with reliable and affordable internet and fiber services.

EP: You started your career as an engineer before advancing through the ranks at Alliant Energy and its affiliate companies. Given your background, what perspective can you offer on how our industry can continue to develop the careers of promising young professionals?

JL: When I started my career, I had ideas of the type of work I wanted to do. I wanted to solve problems and design systems that would help people connect to the safe and reliable energy they counted on. Throughout my career, I have found myself at what I like to call intersections.

Each intersection brought a new opportunity that did not always look like I thought it might—whether that was the project assignment, the state the work was in, or the size of the team with which I would be working. But, my openness to change allowed me to walk into each of those opportunities with curiosity to learn new things and to use my abilities to solve problems and grow. This led to new and larger opportunities along the way.

I have learned so much from others—people of all backgrounds and at all different points in their career journeys. Especially in the role I have now as Executive Chair, many people come to me for answers or advice. My job is to listen to the challenges that our teams are facing and help employees find answers. Most of the time, they already know.

My role today is to enable and to unleash the talent in others. As a leader, it is important to remember that you cannot do things alone. You must leverage the power and strength of the team.

EP: Extreme weather events are impacting large swaths of the country with increasing intensity and frequency. During your tenure at Alliant Energy, you helped guide the company through Winter Storm Uri, the 2020 derecho, and other natural disasters. What can you say about Alliant Energy’s and the industry’s need to prioritize reliability and resilience in the face of extreme weather?

JL: One thing I have learned about the uptick in storm activity over the years is that, while the Midwest was not built to withstand hurricane-force winds, its people are built to withstand anything. I was reminded of this after visiting several Iowa communities as the clouds lifted after the 2020 derecho windstorm, the largest storm event in our company’s history. While the devastation was greater than any picture could bring to life, the resilience I saw in our crews and customers was nothing short of remarkable.

We were proud to receive EEI’s Emergency Response Award for working collaboratively with mutual assistance crews to restore electricity following the derecho. Looking back, I am proud and grateful that we conducted this work safely and with the gracious support and patience of our customers.

Similarly, in 2021, after Winter Storm Uri, which brought extreme cold temperatures and record snowfall to parts of our service territory, our amazing employees came together to serve customers. As a result of their efforts—coupled with smart investments we’ve made to ensure reliability and resilience and proactive planning by our energy markets team—we not only weathered the storm, but we continued to supply reliable and affordable energy throughout the storm and shielded our customers from significant rate increases.

These storms, and the increased frequency of them, illustrate why continued, proactive grid investments are needed to provide the reliable and resilient energy that our customers and communities count on.

Our customers have seen the benefits of our forward-thinking investments, including our undergrounding efforts. We have now placed more than 25 percent of our distribution grid underground, with plans to continue this work across our service territory in the coming years. Our communities are counting on us to plan ahead and to keep the lights on and the natural gas flowing, allowing them to focus on what matters most to them when Mother Nature is having a bad day.

“These storms, and the increased frequency of them, illustrate why continued, proactive grid investments are needed...”

EP: Thomas Edison once said, “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.” What, or who, have been some of your greatest sources of ideas, inspiration, or creativity throughout your career?

JL: My ideas have typically come from listening to employees and our customers. I have always enjoyed spending time at field locations—interacting with employees and our customers—and hearing how we can improve how we deliver our product and better serve our customers and communities.

As I would reflect on their words, it was clear to me that the foundation of great ideas came from common-sense comments. I felt that our success would be enhanced if our plans were simple to understand and execute. Our employees are so committed to customers. I have always enjoyed spending time with members of our team, and this is something that I will miss dearly in retirement.