Events

All Content

Electric system in Lincoln, Nebraska

EnergySource

Aug 2, 2023

New FERC order to accelerate grid transition—but planning reform still needed

By Ken Berlin, Frank Willey

With Congress unable to adequately address permitting reform, FERC has taken the lead. FERC's new interconnection rule is a good first step to ramp up US decarbonization efforts but should be supplemented with transmission planning reform to optimize future infrastructure deployment.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance
Transmission and clean energy

EnergySource

Jun 8, 2023

The debt-ceiling permitting deal misses the real problems holding back the energy transition

By Ken Berlin, Frank Willey

The debt ceiling bill introduces changes to reform the permitting process in the United States. But the legislation will do little to clear blockages in the permitting queue. To meet climate targets, legislators must adopt additional measures that are specific to transmission and renewable interconnection.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

EnergySource

Sep 28, 2022

Establishing a national green bank with the GHG Reduction Fund will reduce emissions, promote environmental justice

By Ken Berlin

The Inflation Reduction Act creates a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to accelerate the United States’ energy transition—and ensure that the transition is an equitable one. Capitalizing a national climate bank would provide a long-term, comparatively low-cost solution to reduce the United States’ reliance on fossil fuels and its greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Ken Berlin is a senior fellow and the director of the Financing and Achieving Cost Competitive Climate Solutions Project at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. He has devoted his career to leadership on environment, energy, and climate-change issues. From 2014 to May 2022, Berlin was the president and chief executive officer of the Climate Reality Project, an organization founded and chaired by former US vice president Al Gore. He built the project into an international organization with offices in eleven countries and 130 chapters in the United States. The Climate Reality Project is dedicated to building public support for addressing the climate crisis. It has led  multi-day trainings for over forty thousand climate activists, gathered the activists into a powerful international grassroots network, and activated them to work on climate-crisis issues and solutions.

Berlin was a co-founder with Reed Hundt in 2010 of the Coalition for Green Capital, an organization that works with governments at the international, national, state, and local levels to establish green bank finance institutions to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean transportation. Prior to that, he chaired the Environmental and Climate Change practices at the law firm of Skadden Arps where he was recognized as one of the leading climate-change attorneys in the United States and internationally. He has extensive legal and policy expertise on US and international environmental issues including clean energy; corporate compliance; environmental, social, and corporate governance; biodiversity; and forestry.

Berlin has served as chairman of the board of the Environmental Law Institute, the Center for International Environmental Law, the American Bird Conservancy, and Rare. He has served on the boards of other wildlife and environmental organizations and was involved with founding of the Alliance for Zero Extinction. He founded the Wildlife and Marine Resource s Section in the US Department of Justice.

Berlin is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Law School.