AEE Reports

This report quantifies the economic benefits that might accrue to 11 Western states from a broad, West-wide organized electricity market known as regional transmission organization (RTO). It provides the total, combined economic impacts for the 11 Western states that were evaluated as part of this study effort.

Energy Strategies and Peterson & Associates prepared this report at the request of AEE to fill a research gap on the broader economic impacts that might result from the electricity cost savings and structural changes brought about by a potential RTO in the West. The analysis performed in this impact study, and forthcoming companion state-level economic impact result summaries, find that substantial economic benefits, including new jobs, new indirect business taxes, and increases to Gross Regional Product are likely to flow to the region if a Western RTO is established. 

Compared to the status quo, a Western RTO would by 2030:

• Bring up to 657,000 new permanent, high-paying jobs to the West
• Save Western households more than $1.4 billion per year from lower electricity costs
• Raise annual gross state revenue across the West by up to $79 billion per year
• Add up to 4,400 Megawatts of additional clean energy to the Western grid

The 11 states studied are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

AEE’s vision is 100% clean electricity and electrified transportation in the U.S., and we support a broad range of technologies, products, and services that will get us to that goal. Clean hydrogen, meaning hydrogen produced using solely zero-carbon energy resources, has the potential to contribute to a 100% clean energy economy by utilizing advanced energy resources in place of fossil fuels. This document outlines key principles and considerations that legislators and other decisionmakers can use to develop and evaluate clean hydrogen policies.

A team of 13 graduate students in Columbia University’s MPA in Environmental Science and Policy program worked to develop for AEE recommendations to accelerate the adoption of electric school buses in some of the country’s most promising markets. Through a series of policy and financial recommendations, the Columbia team identified pathways to adoption in support of AEE’s ongoing work in three fast-growing Sun Belt states – Arizona, Florida, and Texas. The report discusses the current landscape surrounding energy markets and regulation in these states, analyzes political considerations affecting electric school bus adoption, and provides recommendations for accelerating the transition to emissions-free school transportation fleets.

Acceleration of the clean energy transition is dramatically shifting the types of electric generation technologies used to meet electricity demand and reliably operate the grid. Rapid cost declines in advanced energy technologies like wind, solar, and energy storage are making them increasingly competitive choices for new generation additions. While there has been considerable attention devoted to determining the reliability value of these new resource types, the methods used to evaluate the resource adequacy, or capacity value, of conventional thermal generating resources (including coal, natural gas, and oil-fired power plants) have not been formally reexamined or updated in decades.

Information technology (IT) and data solutions are a central focus of modern enterprise in every industry. Many industries have made the transition from traditional, on-premises IT solutions to cloud computing — and those industries have subsequently benefited from the scalability, flexibility, and efficient use of capacity cloud computing offers. However, regulations that have been in place for nearly a century have delayed the ability of utilities to transition from on-premises systems to cloud computing services. This paper, from AEE and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), examines the regulatory reforms needed to modernize the IT systems that utilities depend on to provide safe, reliable, and efficient operations.