The Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and our investor-owned electric company members are committed to delivering—and to leading—America’s clean energy future.
Across the country, EEI’s member companies are working every day to get the energy we provide as clean as we can as fast as we can, without compromising on the reliability and affordability that are essential to the customers and communities we serve.
Today, 40 percent of our nation’s electricity comes from clean, carbon-free sources, including nuclear energy, hydropower, wind, and solar energy. And, thanks largely to the leadership of EEI’s member companies, carbon emissions from the U.S. power sector are at their lowest level in more than 40 years.
Since 2010, EEI’s member companies have invested more than $1 trillion in energy infrastructure to meet our customers’ expectations for clean energy and to provide the future energy services they deserve.
Recognizing that technology, ultimately, will drive the timeline to a 100-percent clean energy future, EEI and our partners in the Carbon-Free Technology Initiative are advocating for policies that expand the research, development, demonstration, and deployment of advanced renewables and new, 24/7, carbon-free power technologies that are affordable for customers.
We also are advocating for policies that help get critical energy grid infrastructure, especially transmission, built more quickly. Transmission is key to integrating more renewables, more clean energy, and more technologies into the grid affordably and reliably, and EEI’s member companies are vital to transmission development.
It is important to us that we lead on clean energy in a way that gives us all the options, including making sure that we maintain the existing nuclear fleet and that we are still able to use natural gas to help achieve our clean energy targets. Wind, solar, and energy storage can get us much of the way to a carbon-free future. Using an energy mix that includes nuclear and natural gas will help us get there faster and more reliably.
Our position is—and has always been—that we should take an economy-wide approach to addressing climate change.
Transitioning more of our economy—particularly the transportation and industrial sectors—to clean, efficient electric energy will help reduce carbon emissions cost-effectively. EEI’s member companies are Investing more than $3 billion in customer programs and projects to accelerate electric transportation and to deploy charging infrastructure that will enable more electric cars, trucks, and buses to drive on U.S. roads.
We have an extraordinary opportunity before us as a nation to tackle climate change. There are many legislative and regulatory tools that could—and should—be pursued to drive down carbon emissions across the U.S. economy.
We are committed to working with the Administration, Congress, and other stakeholders to explore all the options.
With the right policies and the right technologies, we can—and we will—deliver on our vision of a 100 percent clean energy future.
By Brian Wolff, Edison Electric Institute Executive Vice President, Public Policy and External Affairs