The e21 Initiative The electric industry is undergoing profound changes.

Customers are expressing the desire for cleaner energy and convenient energy management and automation. Utilities are experiencing historically flat load growth, yet need to invest in aging electric infrastructure and reduce environmental impacts.

Meanwhile, the cost and performance of customer-sited alternatives, like rooftop solar, are improving rapidly alongside the emergence of other distributed energy resources, such as energy storage and electric vehicles. This may enable consumers to make choices that affect the whole electric system but are outside the ability of utilities or regulators to fully control.

Managing these changes requires investment in a wide range of technologies to support the development of a more dynamic, more distributed energy system with many more devices and actors on it. However, utilities must do so at a time when electric sales are flat or declining.

Minnesota’s multi-interest e21 Initiative was launched in February 2014 to provide a collaborative forum outside of the formal regulatory process for responding effectively to these changes, and to provide regulators and other decision makers with recommendations on how Minnesota’s regulatory framework, and the existing utility business model, might evolve to continue to protect and promote the public interest.

Progress: http://e21initiative.org/progress/