We Are The Large Public Power Council

Public power has embraced the clean energy transition. Our members are setting nation-leading goals to decarbonize their generation portfolios and adopting new and innovative technologies, fuels, and investments in beneficial electrification and grid modernization.
‍
The clean energy funding and incentives included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act represent unprecedented federal support for public power, equipping our members with the tools to invest in new clean energy projects. This support allows our members to reduce costs associated with the clean energy transition and maintain affordability for the communities and consumers they serve.
‍
As the federal government implements these incentives, LPPC is working with policymakers to ensure the rollout reduces complexity, enhances flexibility, and enables public power systems across the country to contribute to our nation’s ambitious decarbonization goals.
‍
LPPC also supports strong federal action to expand available generation technology options, support advanced grid capabilities, and enhance end-user services. Continued federal investments in research, development, and demonstration of the full range of technologies are needed to achieve clean energy goals.

The decarbonization of America’s transportation sector is an essential step in reaching our nation’s climate goals. In their capacity as fuel providers and infrastructure developers, LPPC members actively support the expansion of electricity-powered and hydrogen-fueled transportation. Charging infrastructure, metering, and auxiliary electric technologies are natural extensions of the distribution grid.

As leaders within the regions where they operate, our members work with local, state, and federal governments; community stakeholders; and other industries to advance electrification and hydrogen fuel transportation. They strive to holistically integrate infrastructure and fueling options into communities in a manner that ensures citizens are served equitably throughout this transition.

Public power is committed to advancing electrification and hydrogen fuel transportation to support economic development and environmental quality of life in our communities, and our sector is playing a critical role in deploying federal funding and new technologies. LPPC members are leading the way in some of the most EV-friendly cities in the country, such as Austin, Orlando, and Sacramento.

LPPC member utilities are committed to maintaining and protecting the electric grid, ensuring that one in seven Americans who uses public power can reliably power their homes, businesses, and communities. Public power customers experience less than half the outage time when compared to other electric utility customers, barring significant events.

Nevertheless, LPPC members continuously invest in modernizing and hardening the grid, enabling it to adapt to changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from system disruptions. Extreme weather and cyber threats have prompted our members to prioritize and ensure sufficient capacity to power Americans through these increasingly frequent disruptions.

As we transition to the grid of the future, LPPC is advocating for policies that build upon the existing regulatory framework to enhance the resilience of the nation’s electric grid.

Over the last decade, LPPC member utilities have invested more than $100 billion in power distribution, transmission, and generation infrastructure to support reliability, affordability, environmental stewardship, and economic development in the regions and communities they serve.
‍
During the next ten years, LPPC members plan to make significant investments to increase reliability, improve resilience, modernize generation, develop clean energy, and update the grid to accommodate new technologies and electrification of the transportation and building sectors.
‍
However, our members could invest even more if Congress protects public power financing tools, including:

• Preservation of the exclusion of interest on state and municipal bonds from taxable income.
• Restoration of tax-exempt advance refunding.
• Ensuring public power’s access to clean energy investment incentives available to other utilities through sequestration-protected direct payments instead of tax credits.
• Elimination of outdated private use restrictions in the Internal Revenue Code.
• Protection of direct pay bonds from after-the-fact mandatory sequestration.

LPPC’s members provide power to 30 million Americans, and these public power financing tools are essential to lowering borrowing and project costs for energy infrastructure investments. This, in turn, reduces rates for public power customers while spurring investment in new infrastructure projects across the country.