A Market in Transition: Evaluating California’s Shifting Energy Landscape

Wednesday, September 26
9:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Location: 206AB

A discussion focused on the outcome of the legislative session, including regionalization, SB100, accelerated procurement, and wildfire legislation and what it means for 2019. We will also discuss major regulatory trends, including the rise of customer choice and the state’s pathway to deep decarbonization. How do companies navigate California’s market in these choppy waters as these structural changes are underway?

Rick Umoff

Regulatory Counsel & Director, State Affairs
Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)

Rick Umoff is Regulatory Counsel and Director of State Affairs at SEIA. Rick provides legal and regulatory support on solar energy matters throughout the United States. Currently, Rick leads SEIA's efforts to drive solar markets through the Clean Power Plan and New York’s REV initiative. Additionally, Rick supports SEIA's efforts to promote solar deployment in the Midwest. Rick has worked on regulatory and policy matters at 3Degrees, a leading renewable energy marketer, the Center for Resource Solutions, a national clean energy policy non-profit, and the California Public Utilities Commission. Rick lives in Washington, D.C.

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Delaney L. Hunter

Managing Partner
California Advisors, LLC

Delaney Hunter is a veteran lobbyist with 25 years of policy experience in political and governmental work. Ms. Hunter serves as the Managing Partner of Cal Advisors and her energy clientele comprise a representative sample of every aspect of the electricity market in California, including investor owned utilities, municipal utilities, renewable energy developers, distributed generation, and energy storage. Ms. Hunter is a leading expert in the energy arena with extensive experience working with the California Energy Commission (CEC), the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), and California Resources Board (CARB).

Prior to co-founding Cal Advisors in late 2010, Ms. Hunter served as a Principal with the Dewey Square Group, launching their California lobbying practice and expanding their energy practice. In March 2005, she was appointed as the Director, Office of Governmental Affairs for the California Public Utilities Commission. In this capacity she was responsible for managing the Commission’s legislative agenda and political negotiations on key policies and also oversaw the confirmation process for four Commissioners. Ms. Hunter also served as Legislative Director for a Sacramento based lobbying firm where she worked with over 20 different private sector and public agency clients and she assisted the firm’s clients with countless pieces of legislation ranging from transportation and transit funding to the fallout from California’s energy crisis. She began her political career in 1993 in the office of Senator Bill Leonard and served as the Senate Republican staff to the historic conference committee on AB 1890 (Brulte) which restructured California’s energy industry and created the California Independent System Operator (CAISO).

Ms. Hunter currently serves as a member of the advisory board to the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and is the President of the Board for California Women in Energy.

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Peter Miller

Western Region Director, Climate and Clean Energy Program
Natural Resources Defense Council

Peter Miller is the Western Region Director of NRDC's Climate and Clean Energy Program. He has more than 30 years of experience working to develop and implement science-based energy and climate policy and his professional experience includes energy efficiency policy and programs, renewables, and RD&D. He has particular expertise in energy efficiency measurement and evaluation and carbon offsets. He currently sits on the board of the Climate Action Reserve, served on the California Board for Energy Efficiency, and on both independent review panels tasked with evaluating the Public Interest Energy Research program at the California Energy Commission. Miller holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from Reed College and a master’s in resource systems and policy design from Dartmouth College. He is based in San Francisco.

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Virinder Singh

Director, Regulatory and Legislative Affairs
EDF Renewables

Since 2010, Virinder has served as Director of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs at EDF Renewables, a leading North American renewable energy development company and O&M provider in solar, wind and energy storage. As head of EDFR’s U.S. government affairs, Virinder’s work has covered wind, solar, biogas, and energy storage, and is responsible for federal affairs and state-level policy. His work includes broad market policies and critical path issues for specific EDFR projects.

While at EDFR, Virinder has played an essential role in numerous clean energy industry accomplishments, including demand-side policies in Oregon, California and New York, consensus-based renewables tax policy in Kansas, and FERC’s 2013 modernization of small generator interconnection requirements. He has also played a role in protecting the industry from harmful policies at the state and federal level.

While at Pacificorp, Virinder was central to the six-state utility’s planning efforts that resulted in 1,400 MW of renewable energy in the Northwest, Wyoming and Utah, and its pioneering valuation of greenhouse gas regulatory risk in utility resource planning. He authored the Western Governors Association resolution that created the Western Renewable Energy Generation Information System (WREGIS) renewable energy certificate tracking system that is indispensable for state renewable standards and voluntary renewable energy investments.

He has also worked on commercial items such as site acquisition for greenfield wind development, RFP design for renewables procurement, bid evaluation into renewable RFPs, PURPA implementation, and energy service contracting to take into account environmental attributes.

He chairs AWEA’s State Policy Committee and did the same at SEIA for 3 years. He is also on the boards of the Interwest Energy Alliance, Renewable Northwest, and Climate Solutions, and represents EDFR on the Board of the Independent Energy Producers Association of California. He staffs EDFR’s Boardmembers Tristan Grimbert and Ryan Pfaff at AWEA and SEIA, respectively.

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Adam R. Smith

Senior Manager, Legislative Affairs
Southern California Edison

Adam is the Senior Manager of State Public Affairs, and functions as the policy director for the Sacramento office. Adam has previously served as Southern California Edison’s resident expert on state and federal climate policy– including Cap-and-Trade and pathways to deep decarbonization. Before coming to Edison, Adam held positions with the United Nations Environment Programme, UC Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. He was recently selected as an Emerging Leader in Energy and Environmental Policy by the Atlantic Council and the Ecologic Institute. Adam did his undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, and received a M.Sc. in Environmental Policy from the University of Oxford.

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