The IREC Blog

Clean energy projects offer a crucial path for Native American tribes to achieve energy sovereignty (control over their energy resources) and address a long history of energy inequity. Energy inequity for Tribes takes a variety of forms including higher utility rates, older grid infrastructure, more frequent outages, and, still today, 14% of Native Americans living...

This episode of The Energy Optimist explores a topic that is a central focus of much of IREC’s regulatory work: interconnection. Interconnection policies can be thought of as the “rules of the road” for the electric grid. They govern how systems that produce electricity are permitted to connect to the grid. These policies are a...

This Energy Optimist episode, which follows a slightly different format from our usual interviews, marks a transition in our series. We share the news of Energy Optimist host Radina Valova’s appointment as a Commissioner on the New York Public Service Commission and introduce the podcast’s new host, Gwen Brown, IREC’s Vice President of Communications. In...

In this episode of The Energy Optimist, we dive into this complex system. Specifically, we explore the two distinct but interconnected sections of the electric grid—the distribution grid, and the transmission grid.

This episode explores how large-scale electricity and distributed energy resources can work together to help us transition to a 100% clean energy future. Because hope is not optional.

We talk with Melanie Santiago-Mosier, Equitable Energy Transition Advisor at The Nature Conservancy, to learn about how equity fits into the clean energy transition, how you can center it in your work, and where you can learn more about this concept and related best practices.

In this episode, we’ll answer two key questions: What is the future of energy? And how can we reimagine the current system so that it’s more affordable, resilient, and equitable?

Get a primer on the energy system: what it is, how it’s regulated, who the major players are, and some of the biggest challenges.

Get a primer on the energy system: what it is, how it’s regulated, who the major players are, and some of the biggest challenges.