Webinar: The critical role of local solar in achieving 80% clean electricity by 2030 – Wednesday 17 November 2021

• Presentation slides are available inPDFformat.

Additional resources

The following Vibrant Clean Energy reports commissioned by Local Solar for All examine the role of local solar in achieving:

• The Biden administration’s decarbonization goals(the focus of this webinar)
• California’s decarbonization goals(covered in a previous webinar)
• National goals to decrease CO2 emissions by 95% by 2050(covered in this blog post)
• Decarbonization goals for New York(mentioned in this webinar)

See also the Clean Coalitions value-of-resilience methodology, VOR123 (discussed during the webinar)

Webinar summary

Traditional thinking tells us that utility-scale renewable energy resources are the most cost-effective lever to pull to decarbonize the US energy system. However, advanced planning models show us that coupling these remote resources with greater amounts of distributed energy resources like community and rooftop solar and battery storage actually maximizes cost savings and better distributes the myriad benefits of clean local energy.

Using the sophisticated WIS:dom®-P utility planning model, the latest Vibrant Clean Energy study from Local Solar for All provides data-driven evidence that coupling local solar with remote renewable energy will enable the US to meet the Biden administration’s bold 80% clean electricity by 2030 goal, at least cost and greatest benefit to the nation.

This webinar covered:

• Conventional thinking compared to the needed paradigm shift
• The study’s methodology and assumptions
• The importance of coordinating the transmission grid with the distribution grid to find the overall lowest system cost
• Detailed findings of the study
• Benefits of local solar+storage

Presenter

Karl R. Rábago operates Rábago Energy, based in Denver, Colorado. Mr. Rábago has more than 30 years of experience in energy and climate policy and markets and is recognized as an innovator in utility regulatory issues relating to clean and distributed energy services and technologies. He is a frequent author on electricity industry issues and has provided testimony as an expert witness in more than 120 electric and gas utility regulatory proceedings. Mr. Rábagoserves as Chair of the Board of the Center for Resource Solutions, a San Francisco-based non-governmental organization that manages the Green-e Certification program for green power products, and on the Board of Solar United Neighbors. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Business Management and has a Juris Doctorate (Honors) from the University of Texas and Master of Laws degrees, in environmental and military law, from Pace Law School and the US Army Judge Advocate General’s School.

Moderator

Rosana Francescato is the Clean Coalition’s Communications Director and leads the Transmission Access Charges (TAC) Campaign. Prior to joining the Clean Coalition, Rosana was Communications Director for Sunible, an online solar marketplace, and for MyDomino, an energy savings concierge service. In over 14 years at Adobe Systems, Rosana held senior technical editing and project management positions. She has written extensively on clean energy for publications like CleanTechnica, PV Solar Report, pv magazine, and Energy Central. While on the steering committee of the Local Clean Energy Alliance, Rosana helped evaluate shared renewables legislation in California. She has served on the boards of several clean energy nonprofits and volunteers installing solar with GRID Alternatives.