America's Electric Companies
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Electric Power Industry Outlook EEI Wall Street Briefing February 20, 2024 |
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Executive Summary
EEI President and CEO Dan Brouillette and other members of EEI’s executive leadership team briefed Wall Street analysts, bankers, and investors on February 20, highlighting the industry’s 2024 priorities and the ongoing commitment of EEI member companies to deliver reliable, affordable, and resilient clean energy to the customers and communities they serve.
“This is a very critical moment in our industry,” said Brouillette ahead of the EEI leadership briefing at the Nasdaq MarketSite. “What we do in the next several years as an organization and as an industry will ultimately determine our country’s path for decades to come. And, thanks to the ongoing leadership of EEI’s member companies, we can chart a course for an American energy future that is secure, resilient, and affordable.”
During the presentation, EEI emphasized the substantial investments electric companies are making in the energy grid and the need for further siting and permitting reforms. Other key industry priorities that were discussed include the ongoing clean energy transition; the commitment to customer affordability; policy and regulatory implementation; the increasing demand for electricity being driven by our data-dependent economy; grid security and resilience; storm response and wildfire mitigation; and workforce development.
Leading on Clean Energy
Thanks largely to the clean energy leadership of EEI’s member companies, carbon emissions from the U.S. electric power sector are as low as they were nearly 50 years ago, while electricity use has more than doubled since then.
We are proud that more than 40 percent of our nation’s electricity now comes from clean, carbon-free sources, including nuclear energy, hydropower, wind, and solar energy. Over the past decade, more than 60 percent of new generation capacity added to the U.S. energy mix was wind and solar.
Natural gas is an important clean energy and reliability partner. Now is not the time to take tools out of the energy toolbox. Wind, solar, and energy storage can get us much of the way to a carbon-free future. Using an energy mix that includes nuclear energy and natural gas will help us get there faster and more reliably.
Technological innovation also will be key to achieving our goal of a clean energy future. Electric companies are the main drivers of growth in energy storage technologies, accounting for 93 percent of all energy storage in operation today. And, the industry is helping drive the electrification of transportation. EEI’s member companies are investing more than $5.2 billion in customer programs and projects to deploy charging infrastructure and support the more than 4 million EVs on U.S. roads today.
Investing in Smarter, Stronger Energy Infrastructure
EEI’s member companies have invested more than $1 trillion over the past decade to build smarter energy infrastructure and to integrate new generation into the energy grid.
These investments help protect the grid from extreme weather events and cyber and physical attacks. And, they help companies better predict, mitigate, and prevent outages—and to respond more quickly when outages do occur.
Recent events reinforce the continued need for strategic grid security and resilience investments. EEI continues its work to educate regulators and stakeholders about the importance of stable, constructive policies to support the investments our members are making and the benefits they provide to customers.
Through our work with the CEO-led Task Force on Wildfires and the CEO-led Electricity Subsector Coordinating Council, industry leaders are partnering with the highest levels of government to enhance our industry’s collective capability to mitigate and manage risk.
Our customers are at the heart of everything we do as an industry, and, above all, we will continue to prioritize affordability as we make these investments.
Making Once-in-a-Generation Investments
EEI and our member companies strongly supported the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the clean energy tax package in the Inflation Reduction Act. We continue to work with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Energy on implementing these laws to maximize customer benefits. These laws are driving the construction of smarter, more resilient energy infrastructure; the deployment of more clean energy; and the delivery of cost-saving tax credits that directly benefit customers.
EEI continues to pursue additional policy reform. While the siting and permitting provisions included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act are impactful, it is still too difficult, too costly, and too time-consuming to develop and build critical and necessary energy infrastructure projects that would support rising demand for electricity and a growing fleet of renewable energy sources.
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Maintaining Our Financial Strength
The electric power industry is the most capital-intensive industry in America. EEI projects that electric companies invested $167.8 billion in capital expenditures in 2023. The industry’s average credit rating remained at BBB+ for a tenth straight year in 2023.
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