East Grid (formerly the “Northeast Electrification and Decarbonization Alliance”) is proposed as a collaborative process among stakeholders in the eight separately operated balancing areas making up the eastern Canadian and northeastern U.S. electrical system.
Recent studies have found that substantial economic and environmental benefits could flow from deeper integration and coordination of the region’s electrical system, but that significant barriers stood in the way of realizing these improvements. A regional collaborative could present an effective strategy to unlocking a cleaner, more resilient and cost-effective grid that responds to these public priorities.
This report investigates where joint action might offer the most promise and best return for the broad set of affected institutions and stakeholders on both sides of the Canada-US border. Through a series of interviews with nearly 30 institutions, our assessment asked whether there was sufficient institutional and key stakeholder support in the region for an extended multi-stakeholder, multi-jurisdictional process; one dedicated to developing a comprehensive blueprint for better coordinating, integrating, and decarbonizing the grid. The report then considers how the East Grid collaborative process might best be established.