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Renewable energy, demand response, and environmental policy

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Overview

The gradual recognition of the impact that emissions from electric generating plants have had on climate has driven unprecedented changes in environmental policy and regulation, as well as the rapid development of renewable energy generation and demand response and energy efficiency programs. These technological changes are widely viewed as the most environmentally benign technologies available to satisfy existing and new demand for electricity. Responding to these changes—and the uncertainty about the nature and scope of future regulations—requires a thorough understanding of complex interactions across markets, the development of appropriate business and compliance strategies, and the accurate assessment of the costs and benefits of the deployment of these new energy supply technologies.

Our experts possess more than 30 years of experience in the estimation of demand response and of customer choice regarding participation in demand response programs.

  • One of our experts was instrumental in the design and implementation of many of the early two-part, real-time pricing programs in the United States. She led the analysis of the demand response for many of these programs, as well as the analysis of Pool Price Contracts in the early days of the UK competitive power market. The results of these analyses were used to integrate demand response into utility commitment and dispatch algorithms, to evaluate program impact, and to develop menus of products designed to transition to competition.
  • More recent work has included assessing the need to update prior demand response analyses to account for changed technology, market structures, prices, and institutional imperatives; review of the status of advanced metering infrastructure in California, New York, and Ontario for the Australian regulatory body; and advice to the Electric Power Research Institute on the incorporation of demand response in risk management programs.
  • For almost ten years, Bates White has conducted regulatory and economic due diligence of numerous shared wind and solar PV generation facilities in México. The projects typically serve hundreds of small businesses with diverse ownership, wheeling over the incumbent utility’s transmission and distribution systems. Over time, the government policies and regulations governing the economic incentives (subsidized transmission and virtual energy storage) and cost allocation to these projects have changed, requiring Bates White to properly represent their impact on the projects financial models. As independent economic, market and regulatory advisor to the investors or lenders to these projects Bates White has not only focused on verifying the model’s financial logic, flow and calculations, but has often interacted with the project’s engineers to ensure the technology’s performance is properly modeled in the calculation of expected revenue during operations and expected costs during operations.

We combine deep economic and technical expertise with the necessary analytical rigor to provide clients with the ability to see the “big picture.” The selected engagements described below highlight the depth and breadth of our work, as well as our ability to apply state-of-the-art methodologies and analysis tools to the challenges of “greening” the energy sector.

Selected Work

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