How CEBA’s Innovations team is working to expand access to renewable energy.

---

During its inaugural year, CEBA established two programmatic workstreams—Market Innovation and Policy Innovation—to solve the toughest barriers to unlock markets in the cleantech, policy, and regulatory spaces.  

CEBA’s Policy Innovation work focuses on influencing and driving innovation in policy and regulation to expand access to renewable energy for all organizations.  Driven by this overarching objective, in 2019 CEBA successfully engaged in regulatory and legislative proceedings in Virginia to protect customers’ access to 100% renewable offerings in the state and ensured the large energy buyer voice was present in Federal efforts to develop clean energy legislation. In the upcoming weeks, CEBA will release an analytical report to analyze the potential policy pathways and market structures that would enable more C&I renewable procurement at the lowest cost possible.

Last year Market Innovation focused on educating and engaging stakeholders to tackle the toughest market barriers and develop tomorrow’s solutions. In 2019, we created a member-informed vision and strategy for CEBA’s role in advancing in clean energy technology innovation and laid the groundwork for utility engagement with input and direct alignment of our members.  

CEBA merged the policy and market innovation activities in early 2020 to align programmatic efforts and better coordinate cross-cutting issues that touch the policy, regulatory, market, and cleantech areas. CEBA’s Innovation work will build off the success from our first year and center on the following main objectives:

1. Green the Grid for All—Create and expand options for customers to accelerate renewable energy procurement beyond the grid average, while contributing to the transformation to clean electricity most affordably, for all. 
2. Organized Markets—Expand regional transmission organizations (RTOs) to every region of the country and improve existing RTOs to efficiently facilitate renewable energy integration, increase customer options, and reduce costs.
3. Expand Customer Options—Preserve access in high-impact regulated/ hybrid markets; and working with utilities to improve and expand renewable energy products, as well as developing the next generation of utility-offered clean energy solutions.
4. Clean Tech—Address barriers from lab to market with clean energy pilot project cohorts and expanded educational opportunities.

Collaborative partnerships will be essential to achieve these ambitious goals and drive greater decarbonization efforts. This includes State and Federal policymakers, utilities, clean tech incubators, regulatory commissioners, and most importantly, large-energy buyers.  

If you are interested in becoming a CEBA member and learning more about CEBA’s Innovation opportunities, email us at Innovation@cebuyers.org.