I’m pleased this week to share a conversation I recently had with Ted Ko, the executive director of the Energy Policy Design Institute (EPDI).
Ted is an energy policy expert who has spent years advising energy companies, non-profit organizations, and climate tech investors on how to navigate energy policy.
Ted founded EPDI in 2023 to address a persistent gap: clean energy solutions exist, and states have often passed ambitious legislation to support them. But small and understaffed regulatory agencies and public utility commissions (PUCs) lack the capacity to efficiently navigate the interests of utilities, developers, advocates, and ratepayer groups. The result is years of delay and false starts in making the regulatory change we need for the energy transition.
To address this challenge, EPDI is building practical tools that help regulatory staff quickly map a policy space, learn from other states, and convene stakeholders around shared frameworks before proceedings become overly adversarial.
In our conversation, Ted explained how design thinking can be used to build a policy infrastructure with more collaborative processes to scale solutions and accelerate the energy transition.
Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Lakis Polycarpou:
Can you describe what EPDI is and how it came to be?
Ted Ko:
The original vision came from my experience working with PUCs, as one of the stakeholders in proceedings. And I saw all the ways in which the processes were too slow, too contentious, and just didn’t work. There were just a lot of difficulties getting things done quickly. And so that was the impetus for creating the organization. I realized there’s a better way to do it.
A couple of experiences I had facilitating these conversations have helped me conceive of a way to do it better. And that really came from some education and experience in systems engineering and design thinking around systems and products and things like that, and applying it to my policy experience.
And then saying, “Okay, how can we do this? How can we apply these concepts, these ideas in the design thinking world to the development of energy policy and the implementation of regulations in the energy space?” So that’s where it came from.
Lakis Polycarpou:
You and I talked before about how all these innovative companies are coming up with clean energy solutions, but then there’s this gap. Can you talk a little bit about what that gap is and how you’re trying to close it?
Ted Ko:
There’s a wide range of stakeholders who provide input, influence, or otherwise inform policymaking and the development of regulations. Companies with technologies that can improve the grid and our energy system, institutions and agencies like the DOE that are doing a lot of research, consumer advocates, environmental groups — all are stakeholders looking to advance regulations around energy towards a better future. And what we see is that there’s this gap, as you mentioned, that they only go so far in presenting their information, their ideas, and their research to the PUCs.
There’s a gap between what they produce and what they present, and actionable, useful information that a staff person at a PUC could then use in their work. In that way, the current system is broken, in that it requires the PUC staff and the commissioners to bridge that gap themselves. So they do a lot of research, trying to get educated on really complex topics, so they can interpret everything they’re hearing, so they can use it to make decisions on the design of regulations and programs.
That gap is essentially a big bottleneck in the whole process. So a new law gets passed in the energy space, and then it’s sent to the PUC to implement, and then they — quickly on a topic they may not be that familiar with — educate themselves and bridge that gap so that they can start changing regulations. That’s one of the biggest bottlenecks in the whole energy space today.
Lakis Polycarpou:
You and I talked about EPDI’s VPP convergence project as a really good example of that. Virtual power plants (VPPs) have all this promise, but also, people debate what a VPP even is. And it’s difficult for a PUC to figure out how to even apply the concept. Could you talk a little bit about that project, what it’s achieved, and what it’s trying to achieve?
Ted Ko:
Yeah, so that’s exactly right. VPPs are the first of these topic areas that we’ve decided to tackle in a big way, for several reasons. One, as you know, it’s become a pretty hot topic over the last couple of years. And even more urgently in the last, say, six months or so, when people are talking much more about affordability, and wondering what DERs and VPPs can do for affordability.
It’s a huge topic, which brings with it a lot of confusing messaging and information. The PUCs are hearing, again, from all those different stakeholders we just talked about, all pushing their perspectives on what the commissions should be doing with VPPs to help with the affordability crisis, load growth, and all the other major hot topics. So we launched the project to help the PUCs, specifically, make sense of this whole space, and more importantly, understand what to do next.
It depends slightly on what their entry point is. Was a bill passed, or was it FERC order 2222 telling them to go do something, or was it the affordability crisis and the governor signed an executive order?
There are all these different entry points. We’re trying to give those PUCs a common framework that everybody agrees on. How to talk about VPP policy and how to plan and work on it so that the commissions can make sense of it and start doing the regulatory change that we need for VPPs to grow and become a major part of the system.
We launched the project about six months ago, bringing together utilities, environmental advocates, ratepayer advocates, and companies to build a common vision, framework, and language for VPP policy, and to create practical tools that help PUCs make sense of it all and engage their stakeholders efficiently.
Lakis Polycarpou:
Okay. So you’re still developing these tools? Have you had any feedback from the PUCs yet?
Ted Ko:
So, what we’ve started with is what we called the map. It’s a map of the policy space to help the commissions understand what a VPP is, what the different kinds of VPPs are, and what the different policies and regulations you need to work on for each kind of VPP are.
And just having a common way to talk about that and describe it so you can compare VPPs against each other and understand what happened in another state and what they did to make VPPs happen. Did it work? Did it not work? All these things start with mapping the space, understanding the space. And that’s the first thing we’ve built. It’s a bare bones prototype of what that map would eventually look like and how you would use it.
That’s what we’ve presented to the PUCs so far. We got two kinds of feedback: confirmation that this is something they want and could find useful, and more importantly, specific input on the functionality and features — what they’d actually use it for. We’ve done what we call the V0 prototype, just enough to get that initial feedback, and we’re now working on V1 over the coming months.
Lakis Polycarpou:
So a PUC will be able to look at it, and see maybe a menu of different kinds of VPPs, where they’re being implemented, and information about them.
Ted Ko:
Exactly. So it’s really based on what I was saying before about what the entry points are. What are they looking to do right now? What do they have to think about right now? Maybe a bill was just passed — there are a whole bunch of VPP bills active in the US right now. So a bill was just signed by your governor, and it was just handed to you, the PUC, to implement it.
What’s the first thing you want to do? One of the first things is to figure out what everybody else has done. First, understand which type of VPP this bill is talking about. What’s the scope of this bill? And it might’ve been a vague, just “do VPPs,” or it might’ve been, like the DRIVE Act in Maryland, very specifically said, “do behind-the-meter solar and batteries and create VPPs out of them.” Or it could have been really broad, like Virginia’s pilot bill.
So if I’m the PUC, first I have to understand what the scope of this thing is. And then, when I understand the scope, what have other states done in that scope, and what can I learn from that? And then the next question is, what are the different policy topics that I need to work on to implement this bill? That could include interconnection or distribution planning or DER registries or communication protocols between VPPs and utilities. There’s a whole range of policy topics that a commission may need to scope into its dockets and proceedings. So they might say, “Okay, if I need to implement this bill, I need to open up a docket on interconnection. I need to open up a docket on DER communication.”
The tool is intended to help you do that really fast, so you don’t have to do a whole bunch of research; it can tell you really quickly, here are the policy things you need to work on, and what you need to scope into your dockets to implement this bill. That’s just one example.
Lakis Polycarpou:
Okay. What other kinds of things do you do in terms of the policy design process? Are you convening meetings with stakeholders, and how does that work? How does that process, if it works, differ from the status quo as it were?
Ted Ko:
So part of the reason why we’re building these tools is to help people execute a better process. So the current process and how you do regulatory work in the energy space right now is, like I was saying before, somewhat broken. And it’s not because the people don’t know what they’re doing or are not dedicated and smart; it’s the way the system is set up to be a fight. It’s set up so people are going into these conversations, dockets, and proceedings expecting and preparing for a fight. And instead, what we’re trying to help people implement is a more collaborative process that’s based on a design thinking, collaborative approach.
And that’s the key thing. We’re not coming into this conversation or this initiative, or this stakeholder working group, or this docket as adversaries trying to win any part of this fight. We’re coming into this as a design project.
It’s actually a project where you’re trying to collaborate to design a future that you all agree you’re trying to get to. And that’s a whole key part of the process: actually starting with a shared vision for the future that you, PUC, work with all your stakeholders to get alignment on, and then everyone goes into the process with the idea of designing for that future instead of trying to get short-term wins in programs or policies today or tomorrow. And so that’s the overall approach that we’ve brought to a couple of different places where we’ve consulted directly with PUCs.
But at the same time, that’s not our primary activity as an organization. We’re using those consulting engagements more as test labs for our approach and for our tools to see how they can work and how they can help people do this. So long-term, we’re not the actual consultants in there working with them and facilitating these conversations. We’re allowing other consultants or the staff themselves to use our tools to execute much better, much more efficient, much more collaborative processes at their commissions.
Lakis Polycarpou:
So it’s a more scalable approach — you’re not just having to go each different PUC.
Ted Ko:
Yeah, exactly. So we don’t have to go PUC by PUC. We give them the tools, we train them on using the tools, and we maintain the tools so that they always have the latest information.
Lakis Polycarpou:
So that’s VPPs. Are there any other projects or initiatives that you wanted to talk about that are hot topics?
Ted Ko:
Well, there’s a very similar approach that we can take, and we have taken, with energy storage. Many more states are starting to wake up to the idea that we really want a lot more energy storage on our grids. Up to this point, many states were thinking that storage is too expensive, it’s not ready for primetime yet, and it’s not ready to scale. Whereas other states have really proven that you can deploy gigawatts of storage to great benefit to your state if you have the right policies and markets set up correctly. And so we could use the same approach and the same kinds of tools to help states and PUCs design and move towards more energy storage on their system.
So we’re designing a similar toolkit for energy storage which doesn’t look much different from the VPP toolkit. So when we have a topic that is really important to PUCs and legislators, we can apply the same approach to it.
Lakis Polycarpou:
That makes sense. So what’s next for the organization?
Ted Ko:
Yeah, the key for us, honestly, is finding supporters and funders for our work. What we’ve done up to this point has essentially been bootstrapped. We are a 501C3 nonprofit, so we are looking for philanthropic support from either individuals and their donor advised funds or even foundations who are used to funding this kind of policy work and understand that what we’re doing is taking all that good work they’ve funded up to this point, and we’re trying to take it the last mile to the PUC staff where it has an impact and makes a difference.
So we can work with everybody who’s done work in the space, and help them take their work to impact.
We can partner with everybody. We’re holding a unique place in the space where we can help everybody make sure their work has impact and makes a real difference in the near term at the PUC level, at the regulatory level. We have half a dozen ideas in process right now. We’re looking for the right partners and funders to take it forward and make it a reality.
Lakis Polycarpou:
Very cool. Do you have anything else that I’m missing that’s important that you talk about?
Ted Ko:
We’re seeing a lot of hot topics in the news around energy, and especially with oil prices going up. So affordability, obviously, is getting more and more intense as a question.
There’s a lot of technology out there that can really help us address the affordability crisis, help us address new load from data centers, help us transition off of these fossil fuels that are getting super expensive. These are big problems. There are a lot of technologies out there already to help us transform our energy system so that we’re not so vulnerable to these crises.
It’s the policy and the things that need to happen at the regulatory level that are lagging behind. This has been true for a long time, but we need to recognize that if we want to move the energy transition and move our system to a better place, we don’t actually need technological breakthroughs. We don’t really even need a lot more capital to deploy those technologies. The real bottleneck right now, the real barrier is the policy side, the regulatory side, and creating the markets and setting up the markets so that these technologies can get deployed and scale as quickly as we need them to.
The way we solve that bottleneck is by helping PUCs be much more effective and move faster. Legislation gets the headlines, which is great, but then the attention moves on, because people assume the bills will simply get implemented.
It’s actually that next step that is more critical and is more problematic right now. We just passed that bill, great. It’s not as good if it takes us four years to implement it. So, really, we just need to pay more attention to where the choke point is.
Thanks for reading!
If you’re working on energy policy or the clean energy transition, I’d love to hear your perspective. Have you seen similar dynamics with public utility commissions?
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