One week after the election, we can confidently say that Americans from all walks of the political spectrum were energized to vote. It was the largest turnout in a midterm election in 50 years, with over 110 million ballots cast across the country. As we look to what this means for the industry, it is clear that Americans want their elected leaders to prioritize advanced energy policy at both the state and federal level. New market and policy opportunities emerge at the state and federal level from the election results. Here are AEE’s top five takeaways on the election and what it means for advanced energy.

When EPA releases its much-anticipated final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) this summer, regulators and affected industry will shift into high gear as they consider implementation options. While there are many ways to comply, here’s one underlying reality: Given the opportunity, markets will respond. That’s the takeaway from a new report prepared by AEE Institute, based on a review of prior EPA regulations that allowed for market-based compliance. The report predicts that the CPP will spark a robust industry response and unlock a wide array of cost-competitive options – facilitating timely compliance and lowering cost.

This post is one in a series of feature stories on trends shaping advanced energy markets in the U.S. and around the world, drawn from Advanced Energy Now 2015 Market Report, which was prepared for AEE by Navigant Research. 

The rise of distributed generation (DG) is one of the most important trends in the energy industry today. Traditional utility business models, which rely mainly on volumetric electricity sales to provide the revenue needed to cover the costs of the grid, are challenged by the dramatic growth in the deployment of technologies that generate electricity “behind the meter,” which reduce the need to purchase power from central utility-scale generation facilities. Leading distributed generation technologies, including solar photovoltaics (PV), small and medium wind, fuel cells, and natural gas generator sets, combined in 2014 for $6.3 billion in revenue from installations in the United States, and $35 billion globally. 

In many ways, California is a special case. With an economy about the same size of Canada’s ($2.3 trillion in 2014) and a population of more than 38 million (roughly one in eight Americans is a Californian), California’s energy policies affect huge numbers of people and a large portion of the American economy. And now, under new rules set by regulators, California’s investor-owned utilities are getting set to pull rooftop solar, energy efficiency, energy storage, and other distributed resources into their system planning. In California, the electric power system is not just about power plants and wires any more.

Fresh off Independence Day celebrations back home, Congress returned to Washington this week with a busy legislative agenda for the second half of the year. The main focus in energy will be the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee’s push for comprehensive legislation. The challenge: keeping it simple.