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In this Episode
Host: Todd Snitchler, President and CEO, Electric Power Supply Association
Guest: Kara Fornstrom, Director, Center for Energy Regulatory Policy Analysis (CERPA), University of Wyoming
What does it look like for the United States’ top coal producing state to reduce emissions and develop new electricity sources?
Listen in as EPSA President and CEO Todd Snitchler sits down with former Southwest Power Pool Director of State Regulatory Policy Kara Fornstrom, who is now Director of the University of Wyoming’s Center for Energy Regulatory Policy Analysis (CERPA). Todd and Kara unpack the ways Wyoming is navigating a changing energy landscape, balancing the need to keep the power system reliable and cost-effective while also supporting workforce transitions and continued economic growth.
Kara highlights some of the work currently underway at CERPA to advance its mission of informing “energy driven economic development for Wyoming,” including research on developing the state’s nuclear industry and workforce development to support it, and plans for a series of papers on reliability taking into account the need for new demand patterns and planning parameters.
She and Todd also discuss efforts to expand power markets in the West and the creation of a Western RTO.
“The initiatives underway across the country … really demonstrate the need to be thinking of resource adequacy as expanding rather than transitioning. It’s clear that baseload resources are still very much needed to support the grid. And I think it’s causing some rethinking about reliability attributes of various generation resources and the pace of integration of intermittent resources.”
Kara Fornstrom, CERPA
CHAPTERS
1:57 | Kara Fornstrom’s Background
4:34 | Western Perspective on Energy Today
9:32 | Wyoming and Nuclear Power
11:14 | TerraPower Project
18:37 | Resource Adequacy
23:11 | Western RTO Expansion
27:14 | State-Federal Tension
29:42 | Opportunities Ahead
30:51 | Regulatory Certainty Needed
Producer, Audio Editor: Christina Nyquist, senior director, communications, Electric Power Supply Association
Production Associate: Frances Owen, communications associate, Electric Power Supply Association
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