Leaders Will Gather at ACORE Grid Forum to Examine Path Forward on Oct. 13

Keynote speakers including FERC Chair Richard Glick,
DOE Grid Deployment Office Director Maria Robinson

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On the heels of the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) – the most transformative piece of U.S. legislation to combat climate change – the 2022 ACORE Grid Forum will convene the nation’s top regulators, renewable, storage and transmission companies, and other leading grid experts to discuss the near-term gaps and long-term priorities to achieve a carbon-free grid in Washington, D.C. on October 13. Speakers will explore the roles of administrative orders and actions; infrastructure policy; regional and state developments; interconnection process reform; accelerating the deployment and integration of battery storage and hybrids; status of transmission initiatives at DOE, FERC and Congress; and strategies to help maintain reliability and resilience on the path to decarbonization. FERC Chairman Richard Glick and Director of DOE’s Grid Deployment Office Maria Robinson will provide keynote addresses. 

“To realize the full potential of the IRA, there is a dire need to expand and upgrade the nation’s outdated and balkanized transmission infrastructure,” said ACORE President and CEO Gregory Wetstone. “The current U.S. grid cannot effectively move energy from America’s rich renewable resource areas to the population centers with the greatest electricity demand. At the ACORE Grid Forum, we will explore the necessary solutions to achieving a decarbonized American electricity grid.”

“This is an exciting but crucial moment in battery policy,” said Ann Coultas, Regulatory Affairs Director at Enel North America. “The Inflation Reduction Act introduced significant opportunities for batteries. Now it’s up to developers and regulators to make sure those opportunities don’t go to waste because of barriers to entry and other challenges.” 

“With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, automating and simplifying the interconnection process is necessary in order to provide all parties with accurate and timely study results,” said Matt Pawlowski, Executive Director of Business Management and Regulatory Affairs for NextEra Energy Resources.

“Securing energy affordability for consumers and achieving America’s decarbonization goals can’t be done without significantly expanding transmission,” said Shashank Sane, Invenergy Executive Vice President and Head of Transmission. “This requires embracing new and innovative approaches to transmission development including the incorporation of regional and interregional perspectives in planning, compensating projects for reliability and the many other values transmission provides, and focusing on equity in every step of the value chain.”

“Amazon is the world’s largest purchaser of renewable energy,” said Xing Wang, Global Leader of Grid Modernization at AWS Energy and Utilities. “We need more renewable generation to be connected to the grid in order to reach 100% renewable energy across our entire business by 2025. Amazon Web Services can provide a cloud-based platform to help fix the interconnection queue backlog issue.”

The speakers will expand upon these subjects in much greater detail at the ACORE Grid Forum on October 13. To register, visit https://acoregridforum.org/register/. For press credentials, please contact Shawna Seldon McGregor at shawna@themaverickpr.com or 917-971-7852. 

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About ACORE:

For more than 20 years, the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) has been the nation’s premier pan-renewable nonprofit organization. ACORE unites finance, policy and technology to accelerate the transition to a renewable energy economy. For more information, please visit www.acore.org.