2026 Winter Policy Summit

Join Google to see a data center operating in Loudon County. The visit will include both informational sessions and an opportunity to see how a data center operates with respect to energy usage, water consumption, and other factors. 

Limited space is available; priority will be given to NARUC Commissioners and Staff on a first-come, first-served basis.

Registration details are forthcoming.

NOTE: The tour will likely begin earlier than 2:30 to allow sufficient time for travel to and from the site.

This optional site visit will provide commissioners and commission staff with an overview of Pepco's Mt.Vernon Substation and its role within the regional electric system. The visit will highlight technical, operational, and planning considerarions relevant to system reliability, load growth and regulatory oversight. 

Registration is required. Space is limited to NARUC members - Commissioners and Staff only. 

Separate registration required. Register 

During this interactive workshop, participants will delve into NARUC’s new Wildfire Workbook to learn about key issues like data-driven risk mapping, grid hardening trade-offs, and key cost-recovery considerations.  Facilitated small group discussions will focus on identifying new and emerging wildfire issues and their potential for inclusion in the Workbook.  

State commissions face the challenge of ensuring reliability and affordability amidst unprecedented load growth. Managed electric vehicle (EV) charging represents the single largest, fastest-growing, and most cost-effective source of flexible load available to grid operators today. By aggregating EVs into Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), utilities can harness existing customer-owned assets to provide significant grid services, defer costly infrastructure upgrades, and lower costs for all ratepayers.

 This session will provide practical insights into the value of managed charging. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how to unlock this resource to meet pressing policy and regulatory objectives. This session will equip attendees with the information needed to quantify the value of managed charging, evaluate utility proposals, design effective policies, and leverage managed charging as a core strategy for enhancing reliability, ensuring resource adequacy, and improving affordability

Tentative

As pressures build to increase energy rates due to load growth and aging infrastructure, and with inflation and uncertainty in the economy, more households are feeling uneasy about managing their utility bills. This panel will introduce a NARUC Mini-Guide on Coordinating Energy Bill Payment Assistance written by Cassandra Lovejoy of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA). The discussion will highlight best practices for coordinating energy assistance programs, be they the federal LIHEAP, state rate payer programs, specialized rates structures or utility fuel funds, with the goal of strategically synchronizing programs and services to keep customers safe and protected. The panel will provide practical guidance on program coordination and may include Commission, Utility and Community Human Service Agency perspectives. Participants will leave with actionable information on how to better serve their constituency’s most vulnerable households.

The number of devices that are connected to the Internet has exploded in the past few years. Many of these Internet of Things (IoT) devices use telephone numbers to connect to the Internet, which is driving rising demand and potentially straining the North American Numbering Plan (NANP). This panel will discuss how IoT devices are connected to the Internet, including whether these devices need NANP numbers. The panel will also debate number conservation measures related to IoT devices.

(Commissioners/Commission Staff Only)

State utility regulators are increasingly navigating the intersection of energy resilience, emissions reduction, and distributed energy resource integration. The emergence of AI-driven data centers poses new challenges to the delicate balance between ensuring reliable energy delivery, environmental compliance, and ratepayer protection. This session will examine how propane-powered microgrids and backup systems offer a viable, low-emissions alternative to diesel generators for on-site data center power - particularly critical in areas lacking reliable grid or natural gas infrastructure. Drawing on case studies and policy frameworks examined by the National Propane Gas Association, the presentation will explore how propane provides a necessary solution to the proliferation of diesel use in data center back-up generation, co-located solutions for data centers outside of natural gas infrastructure, and propane's ability to pair with renewable energy to reduce data center carbon emissions. 

As large, energy-intensive loads connect to the grid at unprecedented speed, resource adequacy challenges are becoming increasingly urgent. Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and state policymakers each hold critical, but distinct, authorities over planning, procurement, and market design. In response to rapid load growth, RTOs are rethinking market structures, interconnection processes, and long-term system planning, while many states are developing large-load tariffs and strengthening oversight of long-term planning to protect customers. This panel will examine how RTOs and states are navigating their respective roles in managing large-load interconnections and ensuring resource adequacy, and will explore opportunities and examples of more effective collaboration.

Welcome & Roll Call

Approval of July 23, 2025 Minutes

Updates

• Center for Partnerships & Innnovation
• NARUC Professional Development

Spring 2026 Commission Staff Scholarships 

Applications for Support of an Event

Any Other Business

Electricity demand is increasing due to growth from data centers, manufacturing, and transportation electrification. By mid-century, transportation is expected to overtake data centers as load requiring electricity. Fortunately, transportation electrification is the most flexible type of demand contributing to load growth because charging can occur at different times and locations across a wide range of vehicle types. Additionally, electric vehicle (EV) adoption is increasingly becoming more predictable. Because EV charging can be shifted to periods when the grid has spare capacity, it can improve load factors and reduce the need for the highest cost grid infrastructure investments even while other loads are growing. Tapping into vehicle charging flexibility can support affordability both in lowering overall costs required to expand and operate the grid and in reducing household expenses for customers that drive EVs. 

In this workshop, participants will work with experts and each other to document practical approaches and examples for using flexibility from EVs to help support affordability. Objectives of the workshop include identifying opportunities and barriers to the increased use of EVs as flexible resources, highlighting real-world examples of utilizing EVs for flexibility, and developing key takeaways informed through participant discussions. Registrants are expected to attend the entire workshop, as materials and discussions will build toward the final outputs.

Registration is open to all Winter Policy Summit attendees, but separate registration is required in advance. Space is limited; NARUC members will have priority for seats.

This panel will explore how the explosive growth of AI data centers is straining the grid and positioning nuclear as a reliable, carbon-free power source. Regulatory challenges like siting new reactors near data centers, cost recovery for utilities, and state incentives for tech-nuclear partnerships (e.g., recent deals by Meta and Google to revive or build nuclear plants) will be discussed. 

President Trump promised to elevate the American coal industry throughout his campaign. Upon taking office in January 2025, he immediately declared an energy emergency and followed up with a series of executive orders in April 2025 designed to increase domestic coal production and coal-fired power generation. In July 2025, the Department of Energy (DOE) released a grid reliability report calling attention to the risks of premature coal plant retirements and rising electricity demand. DOE has used the Federal Power Act to keep coal plants operating in certain reliability-constrained areas and offered hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to recommission or modernize coal plants. One year into the administration, what impacts have these and other federal policy and regulatory changes had on the coal sector? An expert panel will summarize federal actions, discuss their effectiveness in achieving the desired outcomes, and offer perspectives on what else – if anything – should be done to strengthen the coal fleet.

• Introductions
• Welcome from Subcommittee Chairs
• National Conference of Regulatory Attorneys 2026 Update
• Washington Update
  Brad Ramsay, General Counsel and Director, Policy Department, NARUC
  Kim Duffley, Senior Director of Energy Policy and Legal Counsel, NARUC
• Federal Energy and Large Load Planning Jurisdictional Issues
  Elizabeth Barnes, Deputy Chief Counsel, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission
• ALJ Topics
• New Business

Nordic experts present a multidimensional strategy for integrating massive AI and data center load growth. By combining proactive energy planning, demand-side flexibility, and circular heat recovery, the Nordics demonstrate how to maintain system reliability and consumer affordability. Discover how these regulatory tools and “sector-coupling” models can be adapted for U.S. markets.

This panel explores how utilities are embedding digital tools, like real-time alerts, behavioral nudges, and enhanced caller identification into their customer communications strategies. At the same time, customer risks are increasing as impersonation tactics grow more sophisticated, particularly with the rise of AI-enabled schemes. Speakers will assess which tools are considered most effective and discuss regulatory models that ensure these tools are accessible to all. The panel will also explore considerations for balancing innovation with customer privacy and data protection. In this session, the audience becomes the customer. Panelists will demo real or hypothetical engagement tools (like a confusing email, usage insight app, or hard-to-read bill) and the audience considers: Did it help? Did it confuse? Would you engage? Panelists will share lessons learned from actual utility programs and discuss how customer responses inform program design.

There will be brief business conducted at the end of this session to vote on a resolution. 

FBI led unclassified threat brief highlighting emerging phsyical and cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure with federal and state homeland security implications. 

Wear Your Fave Team’s Jersey!

(Commission Chairs Only)

Remarks by Alex Fitzsimmons - Acting Undersecretary of Energy and Director of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, U.S. Department of Energy

Gold Medal Defense: Winning Against Cyber Threats to Essential Services

Advanced digital technologies are the backbone of today’s power grid and other essential service industries. Yet these same technologies can expose operators to cyberattacks that have the potential to impact service delivery. This session explores the critical role cybersecurity plays in mitigating cyber threats, and strengthening defenses.

Gas Committee Business Meeting Agenda:

• Vote on Resolutions
• Remarks from Hon. Judy Chang (FERC)
• Update on the NARUC Task Force on Natural Gas Resource Planning

Water Committee Business Meeting Agenda: 

• NAWC Workforce Development Report
• J. Fletcher Creamer & Son Water Main Maintenance Program
• American Water Leak Detection Program
• State Commissioner Updates

DERs are often narrowly thought of as smart thermostats or customer-sited solar photovoltaic systems, but their potential reaches far beyond these applications. This session will highlight how innovative DER deployments can solve complex grid challenges at a pace and scale that traditional infrastructure investments alone fail to efficiently address. This panel will present be oriented around three problems and highlight several examples of how DER solutions have been applied to solve these problems. Each example will explore a specific grid problem, why conventional approaches were insufficient, and how DERs meet system needs in targeted ways. Discussions will also examine cost considerations and how regulatory oversight played a role in each program’s success. By grounding the conversation in real-world, practical experience, this session reframes DERs as adaptable grid resources rather than niche technologies. Attendees will leave the session with greater insights into how creative DER deployment can complement traditional investments during a time when supporting reliability, boosting affordability, and addressing evolving grid complexities make innovative strategies all the more necessary

Electricity customers across the country are facing sharp increases in their bills, with recent consumer cost increases (5.5% over the last 12 months) well outpacing inflation. These pressures strain household budgets—particularly for low-income families—and raise risks for U.S. competitiveness and national security, as electricity-intensive sectors such as Artificial Intelligence, data centers, manufacturing, and defense expand rapidly. While surging demand from data centers has grabbed headlines as a primary cause of rising costs, the reality is more complex. Additional cost drivers like infrastructure and supply chain delays, inefficient investments, and more, must also be understood by regulators to devise effective responses. This session will spotlight real customers from multiple segments who will identify key drivers of rising costs, explain how those increases impact key sectors like technology, manufacturing, retail, and agriculture, and share thoughts on potential responses.

February 2026 marks three decades since the landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996 reshaped the communications landscape. Over that time, the nation’s telephone, broadband, and video industries have undergone remarkable transformation — moving from monopoly-era regulation to competitive markets, and from copper wire to gigabit broadband and wireless connectivity. This session will reflect on how the Act’s vision of competition and universal service has evolved in an age defined by digital convergence and streaming video, and how state public service commissions have adapted their regulatory missions amid technological and marketplace upheaval. Veteran policymakers and industry experts will explore the lessons of the past 30 years — and the continued importance of state oversight in ensuring fair, affordable, and reliable communications services for all Americans.

(Invitees Only)

NARUC Committee and Staff Sub Committee Chairs

Explore how AI is transforming the water sector, focusing on innovations that enhance water management, conservation, and quality. Experts share insights on using AI to optimize resources, minimize environmental impacts, and improve operational efficiency. The discussion highlights emerging technologies and AI’s role in addressing the challenges of sustainable water management.

1. Welcome from Chair Hammond

2. Vote on Resolutions

3. Fireside Chat with FERC/DOE Speaker

4. Legal Issues Panel Teaser 

5. Update from the Staff Subcommittee on Electricity

Despite growing interest in DERs, persistent barriers limit their ability to scale and deliver full system value. This session focuses on three key challenges inhibiting DERs: Interconnection processes, Data Access, and limited Customer Value for both participants and non-participants. Panelists will discuss how interconnection requirements (e.g., long timelines, technical uncertainty, and inconsistent utility practices) can impede DER deployment, particularly at large scales. This session will also examine data access limitations, including how restricted visibility into system conditions and DER performance makes planning, participation, and integration more difficult. Lastly, the panel will discuss customer value: how benefits are defined, communicated to customers, and allocated. This discussion will also highlight how unclear or uneven value propositions may discourage customer participation and market development.

By connecting these common barriers to tangible regulatory and operational experiences, this session will move beyond problem identification and will provide practical solutions and insights. Attendees will leave the session with a better understanding of how targeted reforms in policy, implementation processes, and utility practices can assist in unlocking the potential of DERs.

LIHEAP is a tremendous resource for millions of energy consumers nationwide.  For more than 40 years, LIHEAP has been a vital lifeline for seniors, families with young children, and individuals with disabilities, helping them afford safe and reliable access to home heating and cooling.  This panel will discuss the current state of LIHEAP funding, program staffing, and how LIHEAP can continue to be a significant resource for energy consumers across the country.

This panel will discuss the changes in the telecom industry as we enter the 4th decade after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Cable is losing broadband subscribers, fixed wireless is gaining ground, and LEO has won significant BEAD offers. Will the LEO’s be able to fulfill their commitments? Is the game over for the big ILEC’s as they undertake significant downsizing? How will this impact consumers and the states?

Last summer, Texas and California demonstrated that grid-scale battery storage can cost-effectively meet rising peak demand under strikingly different energy policies and market structures. Storage helped ERCOT avoid blackouts and calls for conservation, and enabled California to export power to neighboring states. More recently, storage has also emerged as a tool to address interconnection bottlenecks: in Michigan, DTE Energy executed a novel contract with a hyperscale data center customer to procure 1.4 GW of energy storage to expedite the customer’s interconnection while supporting system reliability.

Despite these successes, deployment of grid-scale storage in the Eastern Interconnection continues to lag. While roughly half of U.S. storage projects in interconnection queues target deployment by 2026, the majority are located in the West. In PJM, MISO, SPP, and the Southeast, storage faces persistent barriers including interconnection delays, procurement bias toward traditional resources, market design shortcomings, and outdated planning and cost-allocation approaches.

This panel will explore these barriers and highlight emerging solutions, including innovative procurement and contracting models, interconnection reforms, and policy updates that commissions can leverage to accelerate storage deployment, enhance grid resilience, accommodate large new loads such as data centers, and unlock the full value of energy storage for customers.

Invited Speaker (TBD)

Resolution Presentation and Voting - Hon. Stacey Paradis, Illinois

Presentation - Local Large Energy Users (TBD)

• Join us for the second installment of our listen and learn with locally headquartered large customers. Jordan Silberman from Monumental Sports, the owner of the Capital One Arena and the Capitols, Wizards, and Mystics, will share info about on which utility programs they currently use and what utilities and Commissions can do to help these companies meet their energy and business needs. Energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions, and meeting renewable energy goals will be on the table, along with novel tariffs and unique cost saving measures. 

Update on USF Working Group
Discussion of Numbering Resolution

A discussion on the challenges faced by many state PUCs on regulating the smallest water utilities and promotion of best practices and policies utilized by many states.  This panel will also address the challenges and opportunities IOUs face in accessing State Revolving Fund (SRF) funding, which funding may be used to improve newly acquired infrastructure from small systems.  Finally, this panel will address the value of healthy wastewater systems, including the investments made by IOUs to newly acquired small systems.

The debate about the pros and cons of alternative regulatory mechanisms has going on for decades. Across the country, utilities continue to propose alternative regulatory mechanisms to advance a more constructive regulatory environment and consumer advocates continue to argue for the benefits of regulatory lag to provide incentives to utilities for operational efficiency.  During this session we seek to revisit this discussion in the context of today’s utility landscape, which faces increasing compliance requirements, increasing customer needs and expectations, a more competitive environment to secure capital investments, persistent supply chain and labor challenges, and inflationary pressures.

(Commission Staff Only)

(Commissioner Emeritus Only)

(Invitees Only)

(Invitees Only)

(Invitees Only)

(Invitees Only)

(Invitees Only)

(Commissioners Only)

The efficient buildout of all critical infrastructure is key to meeting the urgent demands of a growing economy, achieving security, and bolstering resilience. This session will explore systemic barriers within current U.S. infrastructure permitting processes, which can lead to multi-year delays, increased costs, and stalled projects. Can we find the “sweet spot,” where needed infrastructure is permitted in a timely fashion, without compromising essential environmental, community and due process safeguards? Presenters will discuss the challenge, along with their reform wish lists and best practices in infrastructure permitting.

As energy demand continues to grow, State commissions are tasked with finding solutions that expand supply, strengthen reliability, and keep costs manageable for customers. Renewable natural gas (RNG) offers a powerful economic opportunity: it leverages existing infrastructure, creates new markets for waste streams, and drives investment and job growth in local communities. Utilities are demonstrating how RNG projects can be advanced cost-effectively, while also providing the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

This panel will highlight the business case for RNG—how projects are being financed, how utilities are integrating RNG into resource planning, and how commissions can help unlock market growth. Attendees will hear from leaders who have successfully advanced projects, managed costs, and delivered value to customers.

  The BEAD Benefit of the Bargain round has ended and states have received their funding, but what does that mean for ensuring broadband for all? This panel will discuss BEAD implementation and answer key questions about the winners, losers, and issues as the first shovels hit the ground.
• Will BEAD bring universal connectivity at last?
• Will rural areas receive service equivalent to urban areas, even as they see increased reliance on satellite solutions?
• Who will be left behind?
• Will all the winning bidders and technologies stand the test of time or are there long-term risks?
• What will be the impact of the December Executive Order on AI on the $21 billion in non-deployment funding promised to the states to support service adoption, broadband literacy, and other state goals.

As we enter 2026, the meteoric rise of generative AI and hyperscale cloud computing has transformed data centers from digital backbones into critical players in the global water infrastructure equation. This panel brings together experts from the water industry to discuss this issue, as well as Bluefield Research to share the findings of their landmark 2025 report, “U.S. Water for Data Centers: Market Trends, Opportunities, and Forecasts, 2025-2030.”

In response to concerns about new large loads and the impacts they may have on electric system resource adequacy, reliability, and affordability, State utility regulators are adopting tariffs and rules focused on large-loads, including rate designs tailored to serve high-demand customers while managing cost, reliability, and infrastructure needs. As more of these tariffs move from pilot to practice, regulators are asking: are they working? Are tariffs producing the desired outcomes or are cost-shift and reliability risks growing in the background? How can regulators structure accountability, oversight, and transparent reporting to track outcomes and make mid-course corrections as needed? This panel will review real-world experiences with large-load tariffs across states, highlighting key metrics and transparency practices regulators can use to assess and develop effective large load tariffs and review their effectiveness.

North America’s energy system is at a crossroads. Power and gas markets have operated in silos for over a century, but today’s reality is different: record electricity demand, rapid coal retirements, and a wave of renewables, all creating new reliability challenges. Natural gas is the indispensable bridge, but independence between power and gas planning is no longer sustainable. Without modernization and greater coordination, the reliability of both electricity and gas supplies is at risk. This session makes the case for convergence: why aligning these markets is the only path to meet surging demand and ensuring affordable, reliable power to consumers.

AI is increasingly being touted as a useful tool that can improve grid efficiency, optimize utility operations, and reduce costs for customers. At the same time, the rapid growth of AI (particularly through resource-intensive data centers) raises numerous concerns regarding rising loads, infrastructure investments, and customer affordability. Therefore, the question at the crux of this issue is whether AI will ultimately benefit or unfairly burden ratepayers.

Two speakers will debate competing perspectives on AI’s role in the energy space. One speaker will take the position that AI has immense potential to enhance system planning, asset management, and operational efficiency by making the best use of existing infrastructure and resources. The opposing speaker will focus on the risks of AI including increased demand from large-load facilities, significant capital investment requirements, and the possibility of cost-shifting onto other utility customers.

Rather than treating AI as a singular solution and/or threat, the discussion will examine how AI’s downstream impacts affect system planning and resource allocation.

By assessing AI as both an opportunity and challenge, this session will invite the critical evaluation of how emerging technologies can threaten as well as assist in affordability, reliability, and meeting long-term policy goals.  

Electric utilities face simultaneous pressures — rising demand, aging infrastructure, budget limits, clean energy mandates, and workforce shortages — all while maintaining high reliability expectations. To succeed under these constraints, leaders must invest in integrated, high-impact technologies that can deliver multiple benefits at once:

• Advanced Grid Management – Enhanced SCADA and self-healing networks to improve reliability and reduce costs.
• Data-Driven Asset Optimization – Monitoring and predictive maintenance extend equipment life and prevent outages.
• DER & Microgrid Integration – DERMS, virtual power plants, and microgrids boost flexibility and resilience.
• Energy Storage – Battery systems and hybrid storage support renewables, stabilize the grid, and lower peak costs.
• Demand-Side Flexibility – Smart devices, dynamic pricing, and demand response ease grid strain without major infrastructure upgrades.
• Workforce Augmentation – Mobile workforce applications that improve crew safety, efficiency, and speed.
• Cybersecurity & Resilience – Threat detection and rapid response systems protect critical infrastructure.

This panel of experts will discuss the institutional and regulatory barriers for adopting new technologies, challenges and issues experienced by technology providers, and the industry’s commitment and spending on research and development.

This panel will discuss the key questions surrounding the transition from Plain Old Telephone Service (POTs) offered over copper lines to IP-enabled services such as VoIP. How do we discontinue old services, update the PSTN, and replace TDM with fiber and fixed wireless? What is the role of the states in ensuring a successful transition, with no customers left behind?

Water can be a pathway for building trust within communities and trust in our institutions. Water utilities play a critical role in establishing and maintaining trust in the water they provide. That trust can also create opportunities for water utilities to support broader community needs and elevate the voices of community members. Additionally, regulatory agencies, technical assistance providers, and other organizations play key roles in bridging the gap between utilities and community members. In this session, participants will hear directly from water utilities, agency representatives, and other organizations about their experiences working to build trust with communities around water.

Fireside Chat between President Rendahl and FERC Chairman Laura V. Swett

Resilience in Action: Teams Working Together When Everything Else Falls Apart

From hurricanes to wildfires, extreme events test the resilience of critical infrastructure. These emergencies demand more than technical expertise; they require cooperation across sectors. This session examines how essential service providers and public officials overcome silos to share resources, prioritize restoration, and communicate effectively under pressure.

Remarks by Senator Angus S. King, Jr., Maine

Are We Skating Toward the Puck? Keeping Up with Rising Utility Investment Needs without Leaving Customers Behind

Electricity, gas, and water investment needs are rising while household budgets are not. Regulators are increasingly facing complex decisions about balancing these system needs with customer affordability. This session unpacks the trends and drivers of affordability challenges across sectors and explores what it means to customers. National experts will share current data and tools to identify and ease affordability stress.