McDermott hosted Rob Gramlich, Founder and President of Grid
Strategies, LLC, on July 16 for a discussion of low-cost
decarbonization strategies for the electricity sector. We framed
the discussion around 2020 US Presidential Candidate Joe
Biden's recently announced goal of getting to zero carbon
emissions from the electricity grid by 2035.
Here are three takeaways from our conversation:
1. Three Areas of Change. Rob highlighted three
areas where improvements can be made to substantially increase the
deployment of wind and solar resources: Power markets, grid
infrastructure and grid operations. With respect to power markets,
Rob emphasized that regional transmission organizations (RTOs) can
play a bigger role in achieving very fast dispatch over large
geographic areas. With respect to infrastructure, he emphasized
that new transmission lines will be required to reach the best wind
and solar resources, but also that many of those new lines can be
built on
