ARLINGTON, Va. – The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) and a coalition of organizations representing the industries that power our modern, electrified, digital economy, today called on Congress to unlock near-term capacity and invest in new long-term supply to maintain a reliable, connected, and affordable U.S. electric power system. 

In an open letter to the leadership of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee, NEMA and the AI Supply Chain Alliance, Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE), GridWise Alliance, and Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) propose a dual-path strategy maintain U.S. leadership in manufacturing, AI, and economic growth: 1) streamline and scale technology alongside energy to immediately unlock latent grid flexibility that improves system reliability and affordability and 2) invest in the construction and deployment of necessary but time-intensive baseload generation projects, including nuclear, geothermal, and gas-fired power plants. 

“This week’s Congressional Grid Innovation Expo underscored the technologies manufacturers are building to strengthen America’s energy grid and secure U.S. leadership in manufacturing, AI, and economic competitiveness,” said NEMA President and CEO Debra Phillips. “By coupling generation investments with investments in improved power delivery and management capacity, we can achieve these goals more quickly and affordably.” 

Specifically, NEMA and its allies urge lawmakers to address America’s grid reliability and affordability challenges through additional support for: 

• Demand-side flexibility and distributed energy resource aggregation to lower peak demand, costs, and grid strain 

• Modular resilience and reliability assets to quickly add capacity and improve reliability 

• Digital transformation and grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) to unlock hidden capacity in existing infrastructure 

• Applying AI to energy management, manufacturing, and the grid to enable faster deployment 

“Congress has a real opportunity to make our grid more flexible and resilient in the short term while our nation continues to advance the large-scale construction of new power generation,” said NEMA SVP of Public Affairs Spencer Pederson. “With this approach we can accelerate installation of technologies that will make our grid more secure and resilient while addressing energy affordability for consumers.”