The State Energy Planning Roadmap for Policy Makers addresses key emerging issues facing the Western electric power system as identified by Western stakeholders: a clean energy future and managing carbon risks; maintaining reliability with the integration of distributed energy resources; integration of variable energy resources; and coal unit retirements and reliability. It summarizes eight technical issue briefs, each addressing one or more specific challenges in one of these issue areas, for regulators and policy makers. The Roadmap includes a summary of the challenges, key findings, and options that policy makers and regulators can consider for addressing each challenge.
This work was accomplished through a Idaho-WIEB State Energy Planning (SEP) project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, to foster regional and state energy planning in the West and identify opportunities for multi-state or region-wide collaborations to address emerging energy issues.