Energy Future Coalition

Coalition Executive Director Reid Detchon testified before the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment and urged House members to comprehensively address electric transmission policy as part of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill.

Thanks to the thoughtful input from participants in the Coalition's grid dialogue sessions dating back to last fall, we are finding that the policies and principles embodied in our National Clean Energy Smart Grid Vision Statement are holding up remarkably well as the Congressional debate on transmission policy moves forward, including:

• Stakeholder-driven, transparent, and analytically robust interconnection-wide planning for the east and west.
• Considering all resources in the planning process, including clean generation resources in all regions, transmission, energy efficiency, demand response, distributed generation and energy storage.
• Focusing new federal planning, cost allocation and siting authority on transmission resources needed to deliver clean and renewable power to load.
• Working closely with states, transmission planners, and utilities to ensure reliability and smooth integration with existing plans and policy goals.

Planning, siting, and paying for transmission are controversial issues, but we are more convinced than ever that the ultimate driver of transmission reform is the magnitude and urgency of our climate change goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% by 2050. The U.S. simply cannot produce, deliver, and manage the massive amounts of domestic clean energy required to meet this goal without expanding, modernizing and securing our electric transmission and distribution systems.

Click here to read a summary of Mr. Detchon's testimony or here for the full version.