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What do Clark Griswold’s Christmas lights display, Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” guitar solo and our electric supply all have in common? It takes wires for the magic to happen. 

Like our interstate system, enacting sound policies that deliver a 21st century grid and spur interregional transmission development will drive tremendous economic benefits, increase resilience and national security operations, and maximize the ability to deliver affordable and reliable energy when we need it most. Given the nation’s aging grid infrastructure and our growing need for energy, there is no time to waste.

FERC, governors, state regulators and utilities should focus their efforts on interregional transmission development by encouraging investments that will yield significant long-term benefits.

With the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), our nation is now finally positioned to achieve its climate targets. Thanks to the IRA, clean energy businesses will benefit from stable, long-term tax incentives like those enjoyed by the fossil fuel sector for more than a century. Tax credits for renewable generation are complemented by new incentives for energy storage, clean hydrogen and domestic clean energy manufacturing.

The recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a historic moment for the future of American clean energy. Long-term tax policy certainty for the wind, solar and battery storage industries will drive further cost declines and accelerate the transition to clean power. However, delivering the lowest-cost power to businesses and homeowners will still require a massive expansion of the nation’s electricity transmission capacity.

Long informed by a disaggregated system of corporate Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) disclosures and ratings, the methodologies behind ESG investing are evolving to streamline decision making, improve impact, and further mitigate climate change.

Launched in late March, the Commerce Department’s solar tariff inquiry has been controversial from the beginning. Commerce initiated the process in response to a petition from a California solar company that had little to offer in the way of substantiation for its claim.

The U.N. secretary-general recently warned that the world is “sleepwalking into a climate catastrophe.” So it is a tragic irony that the most immediate and sweeping threat to President Joe Biden’s clean energy and climate agenda comes not from the recent push for more fossil fuel development or the intransigence of climate deniers, but from a little-noticed but devastating decision at the Biden administration’s Commerce Department that is bringing America’s booming solar growth to a screeching halt.

With Russia’s unconscionable invasion of Ukraine, an energy crisis precipitated by the volatility of global fossil fuel markets has once again brought home that our nation’s continued reliance on fossil fuels leaves us vulnerable to unsavory foreign actors and the gyrations of unpredictable global markets. The undeniable reality is that to secure our economy against geopolitical disruptions, we must transition to a clean-energy future.