Draft Connecticut Climate Resilient Energy Code

The draft Connecticut Climate Resilient Energy code is a voluntary code intended to cover the installation of climate resilient energy systems and the provision of power to critical services during grid outages. The code covers the installation of climate resilient energy systems including solar, energy storage, and efficient heating and cooling to maintain living conditions and power essential services for affordable housing residents sheltering in place during grid outages. The code requires minimum levels of onsite backup power, as well as controls and procedures that reduce energy demand during outages and improved building envelope standards and other measures that increase …

A Strategic Framework for Utility Cost Control

The electric grid will require significant investments in the coming years to address a variety of system needs, including replacing aging assets, modernizing the grid and strengthening its resilience, and preparing for projected load growth. Meeting these needs while ensuring utility costs increase no more than necessary will be critical to maintaining affordability for customers.

This report examines the major drivers behind increasing utility costs in recent years. These have included increased spending on T&D infrastructure, reliance on natural gas for electricity generation, extreme weather and wildfires, and the slow adoption of new technologies. Exacerbating these challenges is the traditional …

Clean Air as a Bonus for Achieving Energy-Related State Goals: A Review of Policies and Programs in 15 States

This report explores connections between six common areas for state action on energy-related issues — resilience, economic development, energy affordability, electrifying transportation, grid modernization, and using local resources — and reducing air emissions. Although clean air often is not a driver for such state actions, they nonetheless reduce a variety of emissions, including particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. The study spans 15 geographically diverse states: Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. While these states have not adopted mandatory climate goals, they conduct a …

Distributed Energy Resource Interconnection Roadmap

The Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Interconnection Roadmap (PDF) identifies solutions to address challenges in the interconnection of clean energy resources to the distribution and sub-transmission grids. The roadmap was produced by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange (i2X)—led by the DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO)—and published in January 2025. It provides the diverse group of interconnection stakeholders with strategies to improve interconnection processes to meet the growing demand for distributed energy resources.

The U.S. electricity system is changing rapidly. An important driver of this change is the growing deployment of …

Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Geothermal Heating and Cooling

Geothermal heating and cooling technologies are important and underutilized solutions for. supporting a more resilient and efficient national energy system, as well as reducing emissions from buildings.

Geothermal heating and cooling technologies can reduce peak electricity demand, increase resilience, and lower ratepayer energy bills. By 2050, the technical potential for geothermal heating and cooling systems equates to up to ~80 million homes (~200 million refrigeration tonsii) across residential and commercial buildings in the United States; however, actual adoption will likely be lower. At full deployment, summer and winter peak demand could be hundreds of gigawatts (GW) lower than for a …

Consumer Benefits of Clean Energy: Policy Brief

Clean energy offers many benefits to consumers, including reducing consumers’ electricity bills, lowering total electricity system costs, and providing health and resilience benefits. States can accelerate consumers’ access to these benefits with policies that support energy efficiency, demand flexibility, renewable energy and storage. Berkeley Lab developed a series of briefs that explore the consumer benefits of clean energy, and identify actions states can take to promote them.

– Contribute to a least-cost electricity system by using low-cost resources such as end-use efficiency, demand flexibility, behind-the-meter solar PV and storage, and utility-scale renewable energy.
– Greenhouse gas emissions reductions and improved …

Meeting Summer Peaks: The Need for Virtual Power Plants

Growing loads and increasingly extreme and unpredictable weather will put stress on the electricity grid this summer and in upcoming summers. Utilities and their regulators need solutions that:

1. Are rapidly deployable to meet near-term summer peaks;
2. Can leverage existing network and customer assets to manage investment (and associated rate pressure);
3. Are adaptable and configurable to address changing grid needs in the face of uncertainty; and
4. Enhance community energy resilience, given increasing risk of extreme weather.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) can meet those needs and should be considered by utilities and regulators as part of a portfolio …

Virtual Power Plant Flipbook

Virtual power plants (VPPs) — grid-integrated aggregations of distributed energy resources such as batteries, electric vehicles, smart thermostats, and other connected devices — can help balance electrical loads and provide several grid and community benefits, such as supplying critical grid services (including capacity, energy, ancillary services, and resilience), alleviating stressed transmission and distribution systems, and integrating more renewables for a cleaner energy supply.

Utilities and their regulators are increasingly turning toward VPPs as a key tool, alongside traditional infrastructure investment, to ensure safe, reliable, resilient, and affordable power in the face of near-term challenges created by load growth, extreme weather, …

Collaborating with Utilities to Meet Underserved Community Needs

Communities of color and low-income populations dedicate a disproportionate amount of their income to pay for energy. They also experience more frequent and prolonged service disruptions, impacting community health and safety.

When designed correctly, commercial solar + storage installations have the potential to ameliorate these issues. However, utility programs created to support such installations are frequently underutilized because communities often lack the time and resources needed to access them. Further, historically, few utilities have had the motivation and incentives or experience to account for this barrier.

RMI provided process support to Solar Energy Innovation Network teams, and described their experiences …

Transmission Planning for PJM’s Future Load and Generation Version 1

The United States needs to expand electricity transmission capacity to meet growing demand,
facilitate new generation interconnection and retirements, provide resilience against extreme
weather, and reduce cap constraints hindering access to low-cost energy sources. However,
building new high-capacity transmission is challenging, and currently not enough high-capacity
lines are being planned or developed.

A key barrier to transmission development is a lack of proactive transmission planning.
Opponents and skeptics of proactive planning often raise the specter of uncertainty and
speculation as a roadblock to achieving robust and reliable results. But these concerns will not
be resolved by ignoring the massive changes …