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A Shared Vision of the 21st Century Grid

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Below is a signed statement affirming a shared agenda for a 21st century electric grid. The statement has been signed by the American Council on Renewable Energy, the Biomass Power Association, the National Hydro Power Association, the American Biogas Council, the Energy Recovery Council, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the American Wind Energy Association, and the Geothermal Energy Association. 

As organizations that jointly represent thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs in diverse renewable energy technologies, we share an affirmative agenda for the nation’s power grid, which is changing as new and existing technologies provide more choices for consumers and society. To facilitate the ongoing transition to a new power supply paradigm, we jointly call for a sustained, positive effort to build a 21st century grid infrastructure that takes full advantage of technology available today to increase the efficiency and reliability of the grid. Those technologies include demand response, energy storage, and the broad portfolio of grid-scale and distributed renewable generation technologies available today. These renewable technologies include hydro, biomass, geothermal, biogas, waste-to-energy, fuel cells, and combined heat and power as well as wind and solar power. In order to promote achievement of such a grid, we support:

  • Market structures that appropriately value new and existing technologies for the attributes they bring to the grid, including energy, capacity, flexibility, dispatchability, and other essential reliability services.
  • Tax reform that protects the current incentives for renewable energy, includes extension of the renewable tax credits that have already expired, and levels the long-term playing field to support investment in the electric power infrastructure.
  • Expansion and modernization of the power grid to support the operation and integration of renewables and a more dynamic system of meeting reliability needs, including expanded transmission and greater connectivity between balancing areas, distributed generation, more responsive load, and community power systems.

Our vision of the future power grid promises economic savings, improved reliability, greater access to electric power, environmental improvement, and more diverse choices for consumers and producers of electric power.

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