ORIGINAL REPORTING: New York’s Path To The Energy Transition

New York's landmark Reforming the Energy Vision framework remains both vital and unfinished, analysts say; New York's REV initiatives have given full value to distributed energy resources, but the utility business model transformation must be finished, regulators and other stakeholders agreed.

Herman K. Trabish, December 9, 2021 (Utility Dive)

Editor’s note: New York’s REV pioneered aspproaches to a lot of the ideas that are today shaping the energy transition.

New York’s 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) now dominates the state’s policy debates and agenda on power system transformation, but regulators’ foundational Reforming the Energy Vision (REV) initiatives and regulatory proceedings remain vital, those whose created and shaped it say.

In 2015, the New York power system’s aging infrastructure, declining efficiencies, and rising electricity rates required modernized infrastructure, operations and markets, REV’s Track One Order declared. It offered a vision of a “reoriented” regulatory model with “a consumer-centered approach that harnesses technology and markets.”

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“REV’s impacts still reverberate through New York’s regulatory process and its key pillars will make reaching CLCPA’s goals easier, faster, and more cost-effective,” said Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) Policy Director Danny Waggoner, who was in REV proceedings from the beginning. It may not have met all expectations, but “REV animated markets and changed utilities’ business models.”

New York’s energy transition was under way and utilities were changing, Consolidated Edison spokesperson Allan Drury said. But “the heart of REV” was “its recognition that climate change is real and due to human activity” and its regulatory framework, which created “customer empowerment” through customer-owned technologies like distributed solar, batteries, and energy efficiency.

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REV drove landmark changes in distributed energy resources (DER) are valued by utilities and customers, regulators and stakeholders both agreed. Its work on how utility performance is rewarded and how utilities can serve the power system remains unfinished, but if the REV initiatives still underway are completed, it will fulfill the vision and help New York’s ongoing energy transition succeed, they added.

New York regulatory agencies and system stakeholders collaboratively developed REV’s more than 40 initiatives from Cuomo administration-led clean energy programs and its 2015 State Energy Plan, which required a 40% emissions reduction from 1990 levels, 50% renewables generation, and a 600 trillion British Thermal Unit (BTU) energy efficiency improvement by 2030. That year, Hawaii’s nation-leading renewables mandate was 40% by 2030 and 100% by 2045, and California accelerated to 50% by 2030, while Massachusetts targeted only 25% renewables in 2030… click here for more

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