GHG Emissions, Sourcing Renewables  -  March 22, 2021

Report offers energy leaders solutions to decarbonization hurdles

The REBA Institute and Grid Strategies released March 18 a new report that outlines a path to decarbonizing the energy system to urge action from national energy leaders.

The Designing the 21st Century Electricity System report synthesizes current academic and technical evidence to identify the most pressing challenges standing in the way of decarbonization. Its list of recommendations for establishing a “21st century power system” focuses on achieving climate action targets, providing affordable electricity to customers and ensuring reliability and resilience across service regions.

“A re-envisioned 21st century electricity system needs to be both resilient for extreme weather events and decarbonized to prevent the worsening damages of climate change,” Miranda Ballentine, CEO of REBA Institute, said in a statement. “Decarbonizing the power system cannot happen at the rate and scale necessary without updated market design, and that includes integrating insights and needs of customers throughout the process.” 

The key recommendations involve implementing large regional transmission organization in all regions to facilitate more resilient power that reaches more customers and transmission planning to expand regional and interregional capacity. Other initiatives include resource adequacy assessments, enacting reliability and generation performance standards and ensuring well-functioning energy procurement structures.