One of President Trump’s major campaign promises was to improve Amer­ica’s infrastructure. There currently are plans to move forward with a proposal later this year.

It’s tempting to idealize how market forces shape the outcome of energy transitions. The truth is that many factors affect what happens and how fast. Notably, government policies play a greater role in shaping energy than most care to admit.

The utility industry’s focus on innovation is only a few years old and already its champions are finding that addressing increasing business demands is all-consuming.

How Distributed Energy Resources affect the reliability of the bulk power system is an area that needs more study and analysis for the industry and policy makers.

Most public officials do not understand or consider risks associated with the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity to the end user. Neither does the public at large. Lost or ignored is the fact that the health and welfare value of electricity far outweighs the slight increase in cost.

Here are six pieces of advice I had learned, often the hard way, during my thirty-seven years doing energy work in Washington, D.C.

Our critical energy infrastructure is at the front lines of international warfare, under constant cyber attack by foreign enemies. With continued strong cooperation between government and industry, we can secure our infrastructure against the newest threats.

For the past nine years, I have been focused on how electric utilities, other critical infrastructure asset owners, and the supply community protect against the ever-evolving, rapidly changing cybersecurity threat. Cyber is the only domain in which we ask the private sector to be responsible for national security.

We have something in the U.S. that Germany does not: cheap natural gas. This has made all the difference for America.