Edison Electric Institute Newsroom

SDG&E to Deploy New Wildfire, Extreme Weather AI System

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 22:05:35 +0200

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) is deploying AI technology that will give it “near-instant insights” into potential wildfire and extreme weather risks, in partnership with Qualcomm Technologies and the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

The new Edge Alert Sentinel (EAS) will integrate environmental sensors, AI technologies, edge computing, and atmospheric science from wind, weather, and environmental data. One of its biggest draws is its “edge” capabilities, meaning it will be able to process data at the point of collection rather than relying on cloud computing that can introduce delays.

In Southern California’s complex weather environment, where Santa Ana winds, droughts, and terrain variability complicate traditional forecasting efforts, EAS will be able to deliver guidance in seconds rather than minutes – which can make a real difference to wildfire mitigation work.

“For nearly two decades, our region has avoided a catastrophic electrically caused wildfire because we chose to lead early and never stop looking ahead,” SDG&E President Scott Crider said in a statement. “EAS reflects that same mindset. By working with Qualcomm Technologies and UC San Diego, we’re bringing world-class technology and science together, so intelligence lives where the risk lives – on the front lines – and communities are safer because of it.”

A pilot is being set up on Mt. Palomar, about 70 miles north of San Diego. SDG&E and its partners are planning for a wider rollout in 2027.

The tool is SDG&E’s latest designed to keep customers safe from wildfires and extreme weather. Over the past decade, SDG&E has invested nearly $6 billion to prevent catastrophic wildfires.

The company’s Wildfire and Climate Resilience Center integrates cutting-edge fire science, weather forecasting, and supercomputer modeling into the team’s wildfire mitigation work, helping SDG&E respond to real-time threats while building a more resilient system to respond to longer-term threats.

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.

SDG&E Deploys Goats as Wildfire Mitigation Solution

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 19:40:13 +0200

This summer, San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) is raising awareness about its furry, four-legged wildfire mitigation crews by launching @thegoatsdge, a dedicated Instagram account focused on customer outreach and wildfire safety. The launch coincides with the deployment of a herd of goats across San Diego neighborhoods to clear flammable brush from transmission corridors.

The roughly 1,000 goats are an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional vegetation management work, which often requires crews to scale steep hills and rocky slopes—terrain that goats can more nimbly navigate. Since SDG&E first piloted the goat vegetation management program in 2021, the herd has helped clear thousands of high-risk acres and avoid the need to utilize herbicides and heavy machinery—making it an ideal solution near homes and sensitive environmental habitats.

SDG&E has been working this summer to familiarize customers with its goat herd, featuring them as part of the company’s series of Annual Wildfire Safety Fairs. The safety fairs have been an opportunity to provide customers with emergency preparedness resources and information while also allowing them to feed and interact with the goats. The events are helping SDG&E drive home the critical role that goats play in their local wildfire mitigation.

"Our goats may be a visible symbol of our wildfire prevention strategy, but they represent just one element of SDG&E's comprehensive, multi-layered approach for community safety and grid resilience," SDG&E Vice President for Wildfire and Climate Science Brian D'Agostino said in a statement.

In addition to the goats, SDG&E has developed a comprehensive wildfire mitigation program that integrates cutting-edge technology, ecological solutions, and community collaboration to help reduce wildfire risk. The company maintains a wildfire and climate resilience center, which serves as a hub for research, development, and implementation of innovative wildfire prevention and mitigation solutions.

SDG&E also operates a sophisticated weather network that applies machine learning to help predict weather patterns and better understand fire potential. And, the company has completed more than 315 miles of strategic undergrounding, installed 1,600 fire-resistant poles, and conducted more than 10,000 miles of advanced LiDAR inspections, enhancing reliability and safety for customers.

SDG&E is far from the only EEI member company to embrace animals as a solution for vegetation management. Rochester Gas & Electric works with a team of rescue goats to control vegetation under its transmission lines. And, Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Company (LG&E and KU) have tapped a flock of more than 200 sheep to help with similar efforts. Read more about LG&E and KU’s sheep in the Sept./Oct. 2023 issue of Electric Perspectives.

Spotlight on the 97th Edison Award Finalists

Thu, 01 May 2025 20:30:00 +0200

Since 1922, the Edison Award has recognized electric companies for their distinguished leadership, innovation, and contribution to the advancement of the electric industry for the benefit of all. The Edison Award is the most prestigious honor.

In March, an independent panel of reviewers met to evaluate nominations for the 2025 Edison Award and selected projects from The AES Corporation, Duke Energy, Edison International and Southern California Edison (SCE), and Southern Company as domestic finalists. Projects from ATCO Electric and Fortis Inc. were selected as international finalists.

“EEI’s member electric companies continue to drive innovation across their companies by investing in and deploying cutting-edge technologies and solutions that benefit the customers and communities they serve,” said EEI interim President and CEO Pat Vincent-Collawn. “This year’s Edison Award finalists have demonstrated exceptional leadership and ingenuity, and this recognition is well-deserved.”

The winners of the 97th Edison Award will be selected by a panel of former electric company chief executives and will be announced during EEI 2025, EEI’s annual conference and thought leadership forum, to be held June 2-4 in New Orleans.

Learn more about the Edison Award at eei.org/awards.

Domestic Finalists

The AES Corporation

Maximo, the AI-Powered Robot

The AES Corporation unveiled Maximo, a first-of-its-kind robot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and built to install solar panels quickly, precisely, and efficiently, in 2024. The robot works alongside construction crews to automate heavy lifting and precise placement tasks associated with installing solar panels, ultimately making the installation process safer and reducing costs.

Maximo is on track to install more than 100 megawatts of solar panels in 2025 and is slated to be deployed across 5 gigawatts (GW) of projects during the next three years, including the 2 GW Bellefield solar project in Kern County, Cali. That project, under contract with Amazon, is the largest solar-plus-storage project to be permitted in the United States to date.

Using advanced sensors and cameras, an industrial robotic arm, and generative AI to refine exact coordinates and dimensions for placement, Maximo can install solar panels in half the time and at half the cost of traditional crews while also opening the door for new career opportunities. Already, AES crew members have continued to work onsite alongside Maximo when they otherwise would have been sidelined from installation due to unpredictable weather conditions or staff shortages.

Duke Energy

Setting a New Bar for Climate Resilience and Storm Response

In 2024, Duke Energy advanced its science-based planning to enhance grid resilience and reliability in the face of extreme weather. The company published the first comprehensive assessment of climate risks across generation, transmission, and distribution for a vertically integrated electric company: the Duke Energy Climate Resilience and Adaptation Study.

Hurricanes Debby, Helene, and Milton impacted customers in all six states served by Duke Energy, leaving catastrophic damage in their wake and demanding a historic coordinated response from across the electric power industry. Duke Energy mobilized more than 20,000 workers in response to Helene and nearly 19,000 following Milton, and Duke Energy Foundation provided more than $2.3 million in grants to 78 organizations for disaster relief and recovery.

Resilience and restoration efforts were aided by the $4 billion Duke Energy invested last year in hardening and modernizing the grid, which included undergrounding lines, upgrading poles to steel and concrete in coastal areas, and installing innovative self-healing grid technology. These investments helped to avoid nearly 550,000 customer outages and saved 7 million hours of total outage time during Debby, Helene, and Milton.

These real-world challenges tested and validated the importance of Duke Energy’s commitment to resilience and system adaptation, solidifying the need for the industry to continue collaborating to further prepare for extreme weather events. Duke Energy is investing $70 billion during the next decade to make the grid smarter, stronger, and more resilient. The resilience and adaptation study also identified future opportunities, like new infrastructure design standards, to accommodate higher temperatures and mitigate impacts from flooding.

Edison International and Southern California Edison (SCE)

AWARE System

SCE’s Advanced Waveform Anomaly Recognition (AWARE) system supplements advanced sensors and other applications already used by many electric companies with state-of-the-art physics-based AI models and machine learning technologies. The resulting grid anomaly detection and proactive fault management technology can help to identify and locate problematic equipment on SCE’s circuits before a failure occurs, mitigating outages and helping to keep customers and communities safe and energized.

Many smart grid technologies use electric waveforms to detect faults, but the energy grid’s increasing complexity and the rise of customer-sited distributed energy resources can add noise that is difficult for traditional detection programs to sift through.

SCE’s AWARE system uses AI and machine learning to identify the unique waveforms for different kinds of equipment failures. It also can help to pinpoint where failures take place within SCE’s service territory, accelerating restoration times and supporting safer and more targeted restoration efforts.

Southern Company

Plant Vogtle Unit 4

Plant Vogtle Unit 4 entered commercial operation in April 2024, following the completion of Vogtle Unit 3 the year prior. Each unit can power 500,000 Georgia homes and businesses and will serve communities across the state for decades to come. Collectively, the units have created 800 new good-paying, high-quality permanent jobs while helping to strengthen America’s nuclear energy supply chain and talent pipeline.

Sitting on 3,000 acres of land on the banks of the Savannah River, Plant Vogtle is the largest generator of carbon-free nuclear energy in the United States, capable of producing more than 30 million megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

The nuclear energy produced by Vogtle Units 3 and 4 will prevent an estimated 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, equivalent to planting 165 million trees every year, all while powering Georgia’s economy.

International Finalists

ATCO Electric

Jasper National Park Wildfire Response

The 2024 wildfire in Jasper National Park was one of the most devastating in Canadian history, destroying nearly a third of the town of Jasper and forcing 25,000 residents to evacuate. Despite extensive damage to more than 800 electric and natural gas assets, ATCO Electric restored power to all properties able to receive it within 16 days of the fire’s outbreak—preventing economic losses while supporting community livelihoods.

The Jasper fire was first reported on July 22, 2024, and spread quickly and aggressively. ATCO Electric employees were among the last to evacuate and first to return as they worked to restore power to impacted communities. Through ATCO Electric’s extensive experience with wildfires in Alberta, the company effectively collaborated with Parks Canada and the Municipality of Jasper to rebuild infrastructure safely and as quickly as possible.

Grid hardening was critical to ATCO Electric’s response and restoration efforts. ATCO Electric undergrounded nearly 8 kilometers (5 miles) of distribution lines near a popular ski hill, replaced cables and converted lines associated with a local sky tram, and installed non-combustible composite poles to protect against future fire risk—highlighting the company’s commitment to supporting the area’s key economic driver and source of jobs.

Fortis Inc.

Wataynikaneyap Power Transmission System

The approximately $1.9-billion Wataynikaneyap Power Transmission System is Canada’s largest Indigenous-led electricity project. Fortis partnered with Wataynikaneyap Power and 24 First Nations communities to construct the 1,800-kilometer (1,118-mile) transmission line connected to 22 substations. The system connects 17 rural and remote First Nations communities to the Ontario provincial energy grid.

Construction of the system began in 2020 and was completed in May 2024. With 16 of the 22 substations and half of the transmission line accessible only during winter months, construction timelines needed to be compressed, meaning, in some cases, a year’s worth of work needed to be completed in a matter of months.

The new transmission system is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 6.6 million tonnes during the next 40 years and will reduce First Nations communities’ reliance on diesel generation. Construction on new homes, offices, health facilities, fitness centers, and schools has already begun in areas that previously were unable to expand due to lack of access to reliable, affordable energy—underscoring the industry’s critical work to drive communities forward.

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