Transform to Protect

Tripling global renewable generation worldwide by 2030 is an ambitious but achievable goal and is the focus of Earth Day 2025 on April 22. This year’s theme, “Our Power, Our Planet,” advocates for the critical role renewable energy sources like solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal and tidal play in fostering a healthier planet.

Four WSP energy professionals highlight the latest industry advancements for integrating renewable energy into power grids and exciting trends that are enhancing energy resilience throughout the U.S.

Saurabh Chatterjee: Continue to integrate renewable energy at scale, with advancements like battery energy storage systems (BESS), hydrogen storage and pumped hydro.

Smart grid technologies that use artificial intelligence and machine learning can forecast energy needs, balance loads and automate responses with real-time monitoring to optimize energy consumption. These forecasts help predict fluctuations in solar and wind energy production.

For resiliency, organizations incorporate renewable technologies like solar, wind and BESS. Cybersecurity safeguards against grid disruptions and measures to protect against extreme weather conditions, like winter freeze.

Mike Finnern: Planning for grid outages requires agencies to understand how often outages occur in their service areas and how long they usually last. Resiliency is critical in areas where widescale outages or catastrophic weather events are more likely.

There’s significant interest these days in microgrids, which is essentially creating your own energy locally, typically through solar means. This is often paired with on-site generators and stationary storage batteries. Not only does a microgrid improve resilience, it can also reduce your operating costs.

If establishing a zero-emission fleet operation, develop a plan that is not entirely reliant on the grid.

Joy McLain: Better power grid integration and resiliency for renewable energy sources can be done with technology like smart grids, advanced grid management systems and large-scale battery storage systems.

Upgrading transmission lines and infrastructure is crucial to handle the variability of renewable energy sources. High-voltage direct current lines, for instance, can efficiently transmit electricity over long distances, enhancing grid flexibility.

Investing in technologies and infrastructure that can withstand natural disasters is also important, developing systems that combine power, heat, refrigeration, natural gas and transportation. Such combinations can significantly enhance overall energy efficiency and resilience, as they’re better equipped for emergency management.

Elizabeth Perez: Solar photovoltaic (PV) and BESS systems are viable means for enhancing the resiliency of an organization’s renewable energy reserves. My team is currently working with clients to assess potential retrofits for existing facilities to implement these technologies for battery electric buses.

Organizations interested in implementing these technologies should conduct studies to measure the potential resiliency, cost benefits and energy demands of the different PV and BESS systems that are available.

Chatterjee: There’s been significant effort to decarbonize heavy industry, through carbon capture and electrifying processes like cement manufacturing. There has been refinement for long-duration energy storage technologies, including iron-air and gravity-based systems, and they’re expected to become more cost-competitive in the near future.

Solar panels and batteries continue to get cheaper, making them commercially viable. The rise in virtual power plants is notable because they aggregate distributed resources like rooftop solar and home batteries to function as unified grid assets. The ongoing growth of the electric vehicle sector is bringing better infrastructure, faster charging times, greater range and lower overall costs.

Organizations should consider procuring renewable energy sources to meet sustainability targets; foster innovation and technology advancements; and train their workforces in digital transformation, renewable energy technologies and grid modernization. There also needs to be more cross-industry collaboration with academia and startups.

Finnern: One change is the growing role of low-carbon hydrogen in the decarbonization of heavy-duty transportation like trucking and transit buses, construction equipment for material handling such as forklifts and the refining, and in the steel and chemical manufacturing processes.

There are an increasing number of examples of powering vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells, which use hydrogen gas to generate electricity and power electric motors with water as a byproduct.

Building infrastructure to produce low-carbon hydrogen offers the chance to decarbonize numerous industries and segments and is the key to unlocking this potential.

McLain: We’ll continue to see advancement in energy storage technologies, as well as the development of alternate fuel sources, such as hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel sources like biofuels and synthetic fuels.

Strategic actions that will prepare organizations for these energy industry changes include investment in a mix of energy source and emerging technologies, investment in workforce training, and development and implementation of sustainable business operations and infrastructure upgrades.

Perez: In addition to technological advances for more efficient PV and BESS technologies, there will be greater incentives, research and awareness around decarbonizing and reducing fleet emissions using electric vehicles (EVs). Utilities will incorporate more EV fleet power requirements in their future planning to better prepare electric grids.

Agencies can better plan for these changes by sharing knowledge and lessons learned in meetings with colleagues, by engaging communities and by speaking regularly with front-line staff to discuss best practices.