CEO Tony Banks on the EPA Clean Power Plan Regulations

Star Energy Partners CEO Tony Banks recently spoke at the 2014 PJM Market Summit on the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and how it will affect the energy industry.

Here’s what Mr. Banks had to say about the changes that may be in store for the energy industry:

“The EPA Clean Power Plan presents an opportunity for all of us to expand our thinking beyond the traditional utility scale solutions for meeting our environmental objectives relating to power consumption. It is now up to each state to determine the best solutions for meeting its emission reduction obligations under the Plan. This doesn’t mean that we should immediately shun the conventional technologies that have been responsible to date for meeting our insatiable demand for electricity. But I do encourage the states to facilitate the development of distributed energy resources that will allow individuals and businesses to take more control of how they meet their electricity requirements. Technologies exist today that would allow customers to install cost-effective, small-scale local generation such as clean, non-emitting solar and wind resources to meet most if not all of their electricity demand.

“It’s my personal belief that the public utility’s ‘obligation to serve’ mandate should be more literally interpreted in all states to require that utilities be obligated to individually serve each and every customer that is tied into their utility system. This would mean that utilities should be required to put in place the net metering tariffs and equipment that will allow customers to receive the full economic benefits of installing small scale local generation at their facilities, be it a home or business.

“Consistent with the above concepts and as it relates to priorities that states should consider in the resource planning process to meet the emission reduction objectives, I suggest the following in priority order:

1. Distributed Energy Resources to give customers more control over their impact on their electricity supply and impact on the environment
2. Sustainable Energy Efficiency to achieve load reduction and/or load shifting
3. Strategically placed Transmission Projects to reduce the amount of unused capacity from existing generation facilities which in turn reduces costs by reducing congestion and through more efficient plant operations
4. New Environmentally Friendly Generation such as wind, solar and other technologies.

“Finally, we need to look to non-traditional players to continue to develop the technologies that will help lower our nation’s impact on the environment. And utilities should continue to focus on collecting the electrons from all sources, and cost-effectively delivering those electrons to our homes and businesses.”

Banks has a distinguished career in the energy industry. As an expert in the competitive energy market, Banks has also provided testimony to government agencies on matters of policy and tariff filings.