Daniel Brooks thinks the energy industry is going about resource adequacy the wrong way.

With hundreds of gigawatts of new renewable power, widespread electrification and an enormous buildout of transmission all expected in the next decade, “the question that gets asked often is how do we maintain the reliability and resiliency of the grid with such a massive transformation? And that is completely the wrong question,” said Brooks, vice president of integrated grid and energy systems at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).

“Resiliency is not a barrier to achieving decarbonization; it is a prerequisite,” Brooks said during a Thursday press call. “The question that we have to be asking is not how to maintain the existing reliability, but how do we actually increase the reliability and resiliency with that massive increase in the dependence on the grid” as electricity provides more of the nation’s energy.

Brooks was one of four EPRI executives speaking on the call, highlighting the work of the organization and the trends and priorities that will drive the U.S. energy transition in 2022 and beyond.

For example, expanding and upgrading the grid will also be essential for developing and optimizing other low- and no-carbon technologies, said EPRI CEO Arshad Mansoor. “We need to make sure that the resources we have … the hydro, the nuclear, not only remain in operation but we are operating them so we are getting more from them,” he said.

Held three days after the Rhodium Group made headlines with its announcement that U.S. carbon emissions were up 6.2% last year, the EPRI call was nonetheless upbeat and optimistic about the country’s ability to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030.

Mansoor said that ambitious target, set by President Joe Biden at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, was “a clear indication globally that our ambitions for a clean energy transition, our aspirations are becoming more tangible.”

“We’re seeing large industries that consume a lot of energy focusing on clean energy,” he said. “So now you’re bringing industry together with the electricity sector, just like they’re bringing the transportation sector [together] with the electricity sector, so collaboration and innovation become the theme of this transition.”

Thus, in the wake of recent extreme weather events and the resulting power outages in California and Texas, EPRI launched a new initiative on resource adequacy for a decarbonized future, enlisting a range of industry stakeholders, including NERC, to look at the metrics and methods used to assess risk.

“What’s clear is the way that we’ve actually conducted resource adequacy assessments in the past — with the changing resource mix and with the changing climate and extreme weather that we’re exposed to — those methods just may not expose the actual risks to the electricity grid going forward,” Brooks said.

The industry needs to rethink resource deployment, he said. “What are the right metrics? … How do we actually represent the performance of all of the different supply and demand resources under the context of that changing weather and climate? … How do you take that information, overlay that on to a particular utility grid and determine what the impacts are on the grid and then start to look at the investments that are needed to ensure that it is more resilient?”

Affordable, Equitable Transition

Along with grid resilience, Mansoor believes transportation electrification is going to be a key driver of the transition. It is, he said, “what will make this clean energy transition affordable and equitable.”

With U.S. automakers rolling out a range of electric vehicles, Mansoor sees EVs reaching price parity with gas-powered cars within the next three years. A family of four, spending a total of $4,500 per year on energy — including electricity, natural gas and gasoline — could save $1,000 a year by buying an EV, creating a major economic stimulus, he said.

The caveat is charging infrastructure, or the current lack of it, but Mansoor was again optimistic about state programs and the $7.5 billion for EV charging in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

At the same time, EPRI’s view of the energy transition encompasses nuclear, green hydrogen and the mitigation of coal and natural gas emissions, all technologies offering opportunities for the U.S. to innovate and compete in global markets. Neva Espinoza, vice president of energy supply and low-carbon resources, talked up a range of EPRI initiatives focused on accelerating the development and deployment of low-carbon technologies, including those that are not yet available. Just one example, the 2021 launch of EPRI and Georgia Power’s Ash Beneficial Use Center, which “allows for testing and validation of emerging policy or technologies that can help address residual coal products as we move forward,” Espinoza said.

The closing of coal plants has also led to a greater dependence on natural gas, Espinoza said. “We need to better understand methane, carbon, NOx emissions and other emissions profiles, how to characterize them, how to measure them and, of course, how to mitigate them,” she said.

Projects such as the New York Power Authority pilot on blending hydrogen with natural gas to generate power “will be critical as we think about integrating new low-carbon fuels into our energy system, understanding their operational profile, understanding overall air impacts, understanding overall safety impacts as we move forward to operationalize them and bring them into the energy system,” she said.

Multiple Paths to Decarbonization

Calling in from Abu Dhabi, Neil Wilmshurst, EPRI’s senior vice president for energy system resources, stressed the importance of looking beyond the energy transition in the U.S. and leveraging international collaboration as a “force multiplier.”

Tracking the energy transition in the Middle East is “a really, really educational thing,” Wilmshurst said. “You have tremendous solar installations. You’ve got countries entering into new-build nuclear issues. You’ve got people with oil-based economies thinking, ‘What does the future look like in 20, 30, 40 years?’”

Wilmshurst also focused on nuclear issues. First on keeping the existing U.S. fleet in operation “as much as possible, as much as feasible.” And second, on developing smaller, modular or micro reactors, particularly to produce hydrogen. Pointing to the advanced nuclear demonstration projects being supported by the Department of Energy, he said, “We need to have reactors being built, [and] hopefully operational in the next seven to eight years.” (See Strong Bipartisan Support for Advanced Nuclear at Senate Hearing.)

But the energy transition in the U.S., while irreversible, still faces political obstacles, most prominently the stalled Build Back Better Act and the federal tax incentives it contains for diverse clean technologies.

Confronting the current political landscape, Espinoza said, EPRI tries “to look above and beyond what those potential implications can be and what is required for different technologies.”

EPRI’s research has looked at mapping out multiple pathways to decarbonization, based on different assumptions and sensitivities, she said. “There will be different mixtures of technology. We know reliability and resiliency will be critically important; we know energy efficiency will be critically important; we know the electric sector decarbonization will enable economy-wide decarbonization,” she said.

“So, the sensitivities and the political and policy decisions can tweak the overall pathway,” Espinoza said. “But still those resounding, underlying findings remain the same.”