Greening the Grid Local Action and Utility Advocacy

This presentation, provided by the Building Efficiency for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Center, is from the BEST Center's 2023 Annual Institute and features Erick Shambarger. Shambarger is a part of sustainability efforts in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. During the presentation, Shambarger talks about his experience in Wisconsin. Shambarger goes over energy policy in general and Wisconsin's Energy Policy Law. Wisconsin is a regulated utility state. In Wisconsin use of renewable energy by utilities is relatively low and use of coal is high, net metering rates are low, there is no community choice aggregation, there are no community solar offerings in Milwaukee, third-party financing remains in a legal gray area, and there is a weak renewable portfolio standard under State law. The presenter provides a graph of fuels for electricity generation across the country and compares it to rates in Wisconsin. The utilities have been making more climate commitments but we need big utility scale systems. The presenter lists the following opportunities for local action:

• review and streamline local permitting,
• solar financing,
• distributed solar, PPAs, and sleeve tariffs,
• and workforce development. 

This video runs 28:10 mminutes in length.