Regulatory + Policy Innovation

We tackle misalignments between regulatory system structures and desired outcomes.

Utility financial incentives are misaligned with modern needs and expectations for our energy system. Customer bills are rising. Load growth and electrification is straining the physical and institutional capacities of the system. Investments skew toward legacy technology and outdated delivery models. And adaptation is lagging the pace of change in the market.

Regulators, utilities, technology companies, and advocates, meanwhile, find themselves in a procedural stalemate that too often resorts to conventional outcomes. These stakeholders increasingly recognize that the restrictive and sometimes adversarial nature of typical regulatory processes are a hurdle to managing the scale, speed, and complexity of historic transformation of the utility system.

Regulatory innovation brings new approaches to seemingly intractable challenges. Performance-based regulation provides incentive realignment to reorient business strategies toward new service models and promote affordability. Regulatory sandboxes provide fresh options to bring innovative solutions into the system. DER integration strategies offer new planning, pricing, and market constructs to incorporate distributed technologies and control architecture into a historically centralized system.

The Current Energy Group Approach

At CEG, we partner with clients to advance right-sized solutions that address the needs and limitations of the market. We offer a systems-level perspective, while promoting practical solutions that meet current needs with a view toward long-term objectives.

Informed by our experience working in and with all levels of government and business, we create integrated PBR solutions that balance customer, utility, and policy objectives. We support stakeholder engagement to educate and incorporate broader participants in regulatory activities. We design new frameworks that advance conversations to new, practical solutions. We design and administer utility innovation platforms to test and scale new service models.

Practice leaders have:

• Over 22 years of combined experience in utility regulation and policy.
• Developed Performance-Based Regulation (PBR) frameworks in multiple states to incentivize utilities towards decarbonization, reliability, and affordability.
• Designed inclusive, results-oriented stakeholder engagement processes for state energy agencies in all regions of the country.
• Created new regulatory models and tariff structures that reflect emergent technology capabilities and system needs.
• Administer Connecticut’s Innovative Energy Solutions (IES) Program to attract new technology and service models.