Trust, Influence, and Impact in 2024

RSI’s Energy and Environment (E&E) team was at the forefront of reforms aimed at advancing economic opportunity with deep emissions reductions and unleashing bottlenecked energy supply to meet increased demand. The E&E team achieved tangible impact in several areas because their audiences—policymakers, their staff, allies, and other organizations representing consumers—trusted their expertise, independence, and credibility across their issues.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released and recently confirmed Order 1920 on a bipartisan basis, which makes regional transmission expansion more robust and economical. This reflects their work on and off the regulatory record, as FERC staff, commissioners, and consumer groups all expressed their gratitude for RSI’s engagement. The E&E team led the brain trust on reforming outmoded interconnection processes for power plants, which now delay development by five years, threatening grid reliability and raising costs. The team’s interconnection reform analyses, events, and coordination of consumer groups led to the introduction of a Senate bill and motivated FERC to hold a workshop; it also resulted in invitations to provide input and testimony. RSI’s analyses on market pathways to meet energy demand from data centers prompted briefing requests from FERC, Congress, and White House advisors. The E&E team also wrote an analysis, engaged press, organized consumer groups, and testified before FERC on a creative market solution for growing energy demand: co-locating demand centers at power plants.

Finally, the team continued to elevate the need for permitting reform through research, legislative analysis, private briefings, and coalition work, demonstrating their influence with key audiences in the energy and environment policy space. RSI’s credibility in this area continues to speak for itself, as years of work are coming to fruition at a time when more consumers than ever need less expensive, more reliable, and readily accessible electricity.