The spiraling energy crisis prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine provides further evidence that energy is as much a geopolitical issue as it is an environmental and economic one.

Many countries have banned Russian energy imports, squeezing available supply and exacerbating volatility in oil and natural gas markets, resulting in higher costs on customers' energy bills.

It has also put energy security front and center of the public energy debate. At least in the developed world, a place typically occupied by environmental and climate concerns.

The response from policymakers has been either to call for the production of more traditional energy resources or to accelerate the transition to electrifying everything. There's probably a reasonable middle ground between those two positions, but it's anyone's guess whether policymakers can find it.

The situation further incentivizes consumers to generate their energy at home by installing rooftop solar panels and battery storage, smart meters, and other advanced energy technologies that allow them to reduce their dependency on the grid.

As energy bills across the country rise and utility companies warn of shortages during peak demand times this summer,

High summer temperatures and drought could cause electricity shortages and blackouts across an increasing number of states this summer, according to NERC’s Summer Reliability Assessment.

NERC expects much of the United States will have adequate resources and electricity on hand this summer, but several markets are at risk of energy emergencies, with the Upper Midwest and mid-South along the Mississippi River at the highest risk.

New England’s energy demand dropped to its lowest point ever earlier this month thanks to good weather and the continued adoption of rooftop solar on homes and businesses, according to a report by Patrick Skahill of Connecticut Public Radio.

ISO New England said energy demand fell to just 7,580 megawatts on May 1. That is the lowest recorded demand since ISO New England began operating the six-state electrical grid in 1997.

And while Sundays typically see lower electricity demand compared to other days of the week, the May 1 record was recorded during the afternoon, when electricity usage is traditionally higher.

Traditionally, grid demand falls off at night, but the rise of “behind-the-meter” rooftop solar panels on homes and businesses has pushed the region into so-called “duck-curve” days, when energy demand is actually its lowest in the afternoon and not overnight.

The past year was a mixed one for climate change policy. While global leaders at the UN climate summit (COP26) in Scotland renewed pledges to reduce their national carbon emissions, Congress fumbled in its attempts to advance sweeping energy transition legislation that largely depended on government funding to accelerate renewable energy deployment.

As Congress ponders its next moves on climate change, lawmakers would do well to recall the inherent advantages of America’s free-market system in delivering policy outcomes with broad appeal, which are inclusive, transparent, and efficient. A pro-market approach to climate change stands a good chance of attracting bipartisan support at a time when partisan bickering makes progress on any policy priority a rarity.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Energy Choice Coalition (ECC) on Tuesday joined other members of the Consumer Coalition for Electricity Rate Transparency in supporting Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) efforts to protect consumers by revising rules for how investor-owned utilities account for industry association dues.

Many public utilities charge customers a fee to cover the cost of trade association membership dues while often asking those trade associations to advocate for policies that benefit the utilities, not consumers. In public comments submitted to FERC, the coalition asks federal regulators to increase transparency and clarity in the accounting rules for public utilities regarding political activity and trade association dues.

“Consumers should not pay for trade association dues and the political influence it engenders, just as they shouldn’t pay for anything else that does not directly benefit the quality and reliability of services they receive from utilities,” said Robert Dillon, executive director of the Energy Choice Coalition. “We urge FERC to take proactive steps to increase transparency and accountability in how public utilities record their industry association dues.”

The ECC previously voiced concern over this practice here. The full text of the letter to FERC is below and at Energychoicecoalition.org.

Solar is already the cheapest new source of electricity, which is why the solar industry is booming in Florida, across the nation and around the globe. The economic and social benefits of solar adoption, both direct and indirect, are profound and getting better every year as costs continue to decline and industry learning curves improve. Yet the Florida Legislature is considering bills this session, SB1024 and companion HB741, that we believe are an attack on our state’s solar industry and our rights as consumers to invest in cheaper electricity via rooftop solar. These bills propose changes to net metering — the regulation that compensates solar customers for the excess electricity they send to the power grid — that would dramatically lower the fair market rate solar customers now receive.

In recent years, it has been widely reported that large oil and gas companies like Exxon knew about potential risks of climate change, only to eventually bury the information. A recent report from the Energy and Policy Institute shows that utilities also knew about the threat of climate change as far back as 1968.

With the growing electrification of transportation, heating, and other end uses that have historically relied on fossil fuels, some major oil and gas companies are making plans to transition away from fossil fuels and into renewables and other clean energy technologies like hydrogen geothermal, and carbon capture.

A recent study by two organizations, Environment America Research and Policy Center and the Frontier Group, researched rooftop potential on big box stores to host solar installations throughout the country. Their findings show that rooftop solar on commercial big box store roofs are a substantial opportunity to boost clean energy production.

With over 100,000 big box stores nationwide, accounting for over 7 billion square feet of roof space, the potential to generate clean energy is huge. If all of that roof space was covered with solar panels, it could produce over 84 terawatt-hours of electricity a year. That is comparable to the electricity usage of nearly 8 million homes. Installing rooftop solar would cover half of the electricity demand for most of these stores.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last month issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) to examine the rate recovery, reporting and accounting treatment of industry association dues and political related expenses. The FERC move was in response to a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity over whether ratepayers of investor-owned utilities should be forced to subsidize the costs of trade associations that are deemed ‘anti environment.’ Other organizations like the Citizens’ Utility Board, The Utility Reform Network, Nevada Bureau of Consumer Protection, and Maryland Office of People’s Counsel have come out in support of the petition as well.

Over the holidays, we stumbled across two good conversations on the Suncast podcast that we wanted to share with you. The first one looks at deregulating state electricity markets and the second on empowering consumers with the right to purchase clean energy.

At the Energy Choice Coalition, we believe competition is at the core of our free-market system and that a well-functioning market is driven by consumer choice. Competitive markets produce the most efficient results in our economy, providing lower costs and a greater array of choices for consumers compared to government regulation. We recently released a report that shows competition in electricity markets also leads to reduced carbon emissions.

We’ve long been dedicated followers of the great work of the DER Task Force and were excited to learn that the community is close to finalizing their first policy whitepaper and DER Bill of Rights. Expanding the rights of consumers is at the heart of our mission here at the Energy Choice Coalition, so we’re excited to have the DER Task Force engaged and eager to see what they come up with in the new year. In the meantime, we’ve been building our own list of principles of consumer choice. Check them out below and let us know your thoughts.

Consumers deserve electricity …

Consumers are critical in managing supply and demand on the electricity grid. Consumers have always been able to manage their energy consumption to varying degrees, but many are now generating their own electricity and have the ability to put excess power back onto the grid to help meet demand elsewhere on the system.

As the Department of Energy explains, “demand response programs are being used by some electric system planners and operators as resource options for balancing supply and demand. Such programs can lower the cost of electricity in wholesale markets, and in turn, lead to lower retail rates.”

A shadowy utility front group called Power for Tomorrow is supporting Dominion’s opposition to deregulation. One example of Power for Tomorrow’s pro-monopoly rhetoric is the mailing it sent out alleging the Virginia Assembly was considering a bill that would result in similar consequences as the Texas outages from last February, including extended outages and high electricity bills once customers regained power.

However, Virginia is part of the PJM wholesale market and the larger Eastern Interconnection, so the likelihood of the lack of available resources caused by severe weather is substantially lower, while most of Texas’ grid remains separate from the rest of the country. That said, the state is only partially deregulated, and only large commercial and industrial customers have the choice to procure their energy from other independent suppliers on the wholesale market.

This report presents a data-driven analysis to determine whether the existence of competitive wholesale markets is correlated with reduced carbon emissions from the power sector.