The Eastern Interconnection Planning Collaborative (EIPC) has completed the first phase of a study of ‘resource expansion futures’ as part of an electric system transmission planning effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
The three scenarios chosen by stakeholders for further study in Phase 2 include the following:
- ‘Business as Usual’ represents a continuation of existing conditions, including load growth, existing renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and proposed environmental regulations.
- ‘National RPS: State and Regional Implementation’ represents meeting 30% of the nation's electricity requirements from renewable resources by 2030. This would be achieved by utilizing a regional implementation strategy.
- ‘Combined Federal Climate and Energy Policy’ represents a reduction of economy-wide carbon emissions by 50% from 2005 levels in 2030 and 80% in 2050, combined with meeting 30% of the nation's electricity requirements from renewable resources by 2030 and significant deployment of energy-efficiency measures, demand response, distributed generation, smart grid and other low-carbon technologies. This would be achieved by utilizing a nationwide/Eastern Interconnection-wide implementation strategy.
EIPC's stakeholder process is led by a 29-member stakeholder steering committee that provides advice and key input to the interconnection-wide technical analyses. A more detailed transmission analysis will be developed in Phase 2 for each of the three selected scenarios, along with a production cost study and high-level cost estimates for the resources and transmission facilities associated with each scenario.
The entire report is available here.
