American Clean Power CEO talks grid of the future, policy priorities, and Texas aftermath

The renewable energy industry is on track to deploy more than USD 1trn in capital investment by 2030. Wind, solar, and energy storage already set annual capacity addition records in 2020, with momentum building to meet the robust targets laid out by the Biden administration as part of the economy-wide Build Back Better plan to hit net-zero emissions by 2050.

The American Clean Power Association (ACP), formerly the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), is also working to transform the nation’s grid as a united voice for solar, storage, wind and transmission companies across the nation. Formally launched on 1 January 2021, the 800-plus member group represents manufacturers and construction companies, developers and operators, utilities, financial firms and corporate purchasers in the clean energy value chain.

“Over a year ago, ACP’s board took a step back and said, ‘A lot of us are no longer companies that are pure-play wind--we’re in wind and solar, or wind and solar and storage, or wind and transmission,’” Heather Zichal, ACP CEO, told NPM. “They came to the conclusion that as the industry has evolved over the last decade, so should its trade associations. And they did that with an eye towards the idea that our needs are diverse, we’ve arrived as a power source, and today we represent a trillion-dollar part of the economy. And we are only going to grow from here. We realized that in order to be an effective voice in Washington, it's about how we think holistically about what's in the best interest of clean power, especially given the challenges in what we need to achieve in 2030 and out to 2050 to get us to net zero.”

President Biden launched his ambitious nationwide climate proposal with rejoining the U.S. into the Paris Climate Agreement on Day One of his administration. The move promises to be a springboard for future, wide-reaching climate initiatives that align with ACP's core agenda.

“We are at a very historic point in time to roll out a new trade association like this, given that we have a new administration and a new Congress, and for the first time a presidency that has really put climate change at the top of the priority list," Zichal said. "It is a clear and present danger, it is the greatest challenge of our lifetime, and it should be number one. But it also speaks to the unique opportunity that we as an industry have in Washington, which is to tackle the twin challenges of climate change and economic recovery.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has pummeled the clean energy workforce, and 10 months after the nationwide unemployment crisis began, a whopping 70 percent of clean energy jobs lost have yet to be recovered.

By late 2020, the impacts of the global health crisis left the clean energy industry with the smallest workforce since 2015, according to a BW Research Partnership analysis released by E2 (Environmental Entrepreneurs), E4TheFuture and the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE).

Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia are still suffering double-digit unemployment in clean energy, with 12 states experiencing unemployment of 15 percent or more.

"The big picture as the clean energy sector grows is, we have an opportunity to a just transition that will help transform current and historical inequities, and that's going to be at the heart of what we’re working on with our companies," Zichal said. "The other key area is around labor, and how we find a way to work proactively and productively with labor around some of their core asks and looking at the supply chain."

Policy priorities

Last year, New York announced the creation of the nation's first Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) to streamline the process for siting large-scale renewable energy projects across the state. The new siting process will establish regulations and uniform standards that encompass the environmental impacts common to grid-scale renewable energy projects and identify mitigation measures to address those impacts.

“Permit streamlining and siting are challenges for not only our industry, but also for regulators, and I've been in the White House, I've been in the regulator’s place,” Zichal said. “One of the biggest challenges is it's not one-stop shopping when you're getting your permit. These permitting issues are very real. We need to be mindful of the environmental implications as well as the environmental justice implications of these projects. But we also can't let projects die by a thousand cuts, and we need to find ways to work productively to get there so that we aren't spending 10 years trying to figure out where we need to site projects and, in the meantime, losing sight of the opportunity to create jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the grid.”

During her tenure as Legislative Director under former Sen. John Kerry, Zichal worked on the Cape Wind project, a 468 MW wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts that was ultimately scrapped after years of regulatory and legal wrangling. In the years since, the aborted project stands in sharp contrast to more robust regulatory policies around renewables projects, spurred by increased and accelerated climate targets.

“The big picture is to make sure that customers can access low-cost clean power, and that's the power that they are increasingly demanding,” Zichal said. “We need to remove barriers to growth, and that means things like enhanced permitting and siting. It's obviously good to have a robust permitting process, but it shouldn't take so long that you're creating uncertainty and unpredictability for the business model, and it shouldn't take multiple years. I think there’s going to be a great story on offshore wind in these first four years.”

ACP is also calling for a price on carbon to provide predictability around the deployment of renewable energy projects--and as a critical tool in meeting national climate targets.

“A Clean Energy Standard (CES) is something that the Biden administration has proposed as a way to potentially thread the political needle to get that long-term policy in place,” Zichal said. “We’ve seen bipartisan support in Congress for such an approach. The guiding principle needs to be an even playing field for renewables, so we’re going to stay focused on that CES. Part of the challenge of that is trying to figure out how to build deeper support on the Republican side of the aisle, and I believe that's possible. The North Star for our industry would certainly be to clean up the hodgepodge of state and federal polices, and really get a long-term game plan in place that plots out what we need to do in terms of emissions reductions and places a price on carbon pollution.”

TexasFollowing the February storm that crippled power plants and the electricity grid in Texas and led to millions without power and water, clean energy opponents lashed out at the state’s renewable generation facilities, blaming frozen wind turbines for the near collapse of the power system.

ACP pushed back firmly against the claims, calling the attacks a "politically opportunistic charade," and noting that most of the power to go offline was, in fact, gas and coal.

“We need to have a fact-based policy discussion in order to guide what happens next,” Zichal said. “And while there has been a lot of finger-pointing at clean power as being the problem and the reason the lights in Texas went out, I think the facts will bear that that is absolutely and unequivocally not true. There’s still a lot we don't know, and we’ve got to take a step back after we diagnose what happened and how we collectively work together to prevent tomorrow’s crisis.”

ACP has called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to strengthen the interregional transmission planning process, and to prioritize federal and state public climate policies in transmission planning and cost allocation.

“I think transmission and reliability are going to be at the heart of that conversation,” Zichal said. “Texas is going to have some questions to answer, including whether it's the best move for them to have their own grid and not be connected to the rest of the power supply. I think there has got to be a conversation about weatherization, and what requirements are going to be made on energy companies to ensure that their projects can manage in extreme weather events. The notion that this is a one-off thing that is never going to happen again is just simply not true. It's not a Texas problem--I’d say it’s a nationwide issue. We’re going to need to think about transmission, about the role of storage, and how that might help avoid future situations like this.”