Note: This seminar will be available over Zoom. Please reach out to [email protected] if you would like to have access to the Zoom link.

Title: States Leadership in the Clean Energy Transition: Lessons from New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Transmission Experiment

Abstract: States are major drivers of clean energy policy in the U.S. Yet states often struggle to integrate their clean energy objectives into wholesale markets, leading some to question markets and competition. States are increasingly flexing their political muscle to change the way regional grid operators do transmission planning and make resource adequacy decisions. We’ll discuss the challenges created by a broken interconnection process, rapidly increasing data center load, and the chaotic retirement of fossil generation, with a particular focus on PJM and the other Eastern independent system operators. As well as why 2024 is shaping up as a critical year for policymakers looking to deliver on a reliable, affordable, and expeditious clean energy transition.

Bio: Abe Silverman is finishing a year at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy where he focused on developing pragmatic solutions to the regulatory and policy bottlenecks slowing the clean energy transition.  Before joining the Center, Abe served at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities as the General Counsel and Executive Policy Counsel, working on offshore wind, solar, electric vehicle, energy storage, and interconnection reform, along with quantifying and managing ratepayer impacts of the clean energy transition.  He is one of the organizers of the Columbia-JHU Future Power Markets Forum.

Previously, Abe was Deputy General Counsel & Vice President of Regulatory Affairs at NRG Energy, Inc., working across the U.S. energy markets.  He also served as an attorney at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the early 2000s.