Energy Fairness Executive Director speaks at the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority’s Spring Energy Conference

ICYMI:   Energy Fairness Executive Director, Paul Griffin, spoke at the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority’s Spring Energy Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Wednesday.  

Griffin discussed the perils of deregulating the electricity marketplace and the benefits of hardening the electric grid to mitigate the effects of severe weather events and natural disasters.  He noted that Wyoming’s electricity rates, according to 2019 EIA data, are 46% lower than states that have deregulated their marketplace.  

In a state routinely plagued by wildfires, Griffin also noted how important it is to undertake critical storm hardening and resiliency measures as aggressive vegetation management techniques around power lines.  This task is sometimes easier said than done given the web of federal regulations that utilities in the West must wade through to accomplish this critical storm-hardening task.   Energy Fairness has testified before committees in the Florida House (advance to 5:20) and Senate on the necessity of storm hardening. 

Other speakers included Mike Nasi of Texas.  Nasi highlighted the myriad of federal regulations hindering and helping fossil fuel development.  He also unveiled an effort of which he’s been a part to educate the general public on the poverty inflicted when individuals in the most developing countries of the world do not have access to affordable and reliable power.   

Nasi also illustrated in this video the importance of fossil fuels in everyday life – a fact that goes unrealized in the recent unveiling of the “Green New Deal.”  

Other speakers at the WIA’s spring conference included Wyoming’s newly elected Governor Mark Brown as well as speakers discussing efforts to expand transmission in Wyoming to harness the potential of utility-scale renewable projects.   And, given Wyoming’s historical dominance in U.S. coal production (40% of U.S. coal production), there were many speakers discussing technological advancements in clean coal technology.