Jam-packed with sessions on the continuing mission and contemporary challenges of the electric industry, get a glimpse of the proceedings at Edison Electric Institute's Annual Convention in Austin.

“There’s no question that working with the government at the highest levels gets results. The leadership from the White House, what we’ve seen from DOE, has changed how the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and others show up. We’re working with the FAA as well, and with DOE’s National Labs on important technologies.”

“Making sure that the IIJA and the IRA get executed well, there’s still a lot of devils in the details that need to be worked through with the agencies, like Treasury. Remaining engaged on those from a policy perspective, like looking at how that then leads to implementation, permitting, and siting reform is a big part.”

“There’re significant investments being made in transmission. Yesterday, I cited the work MISO is doing. We have ten billion dollars of projects moving forward. As I walked out, folks with other ISOs said, hey, wait a minute. SPP is doing things. CAISO is doing things.”

Excerpts from the premier session of the Edison Electric Institute’s annual convention, the CEO Roundtable, including Ameren Executive Chair Warner Baxter, Edison International CEO Pedro Pizarro, and Portland General Electric CEO Maria Pope.

“We must find ways into resources that provide baseload power. If we can define a real path to the future, perhaps we can slow down the transition to where we can protect the consumer, not just residential consumers but the commercial and industrial consumers, and keep the economy flowing.”

“If I had one wish, we would have more interregional transmission planning and be addressing the seams issue. That is a need and can be the solution for the number of renewables that need to come online across our country, particularly to address reliability issues and extreme weather events.”

“The one issue bringing all western Commissioners together is being asked to engage on how to design markets in the west. There are two organizations proposing competing day-ahead markets.”

Conversations with Commissioner Ann Rendahl, Chair Carrie Zalewski, and Commissioner Eric Skrmetta with PUF’s Paul Kjellander, former NARUC President.

I smiled when I realized NARUC was holding its 2023 Summer Policy Summit in Austin, Texas.