For the first time in decades, utilities are projecting significant load growth due to rising power requirements from data centers, manufacturing facilities, transportation, and buildings. Emerging technologies, evolving cost profiles, consumer preferences, energy provider options, and state and local efforts are driving the need for a variety of electricity sources and responses. Capital expenditures will be significant to meet growing needs. Ensuring investments are right-sized and consider all cost-effective approaches such as demand-size solutions, innovative technologies, and resilient supply-side resources will be critical to maintaining reliability and customer affordability. Comprehensive electricity planning that considers customer, distribution system, resource, and transmission needs and capabilities will lead to higher value outcomes at lower costs.

NASEO and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) provided a forum through the Task Force on Comprehensive Electricity System Planning for the development of state-led pathways toward a more resilient, efficient, and affordable grid that meets current and future electricity needs across the U.S. These efforts have continued under the NASEO-NARUC Initiative on Comprehensive Electricity Planning in an Era of Load Growth.

From 2019 to 2020, 15 state teams of NASEO and NARUC members developed innovative visions for how electricity system planning could be improved through the NARUC-NASEO Task Force on Comprehensive Electricity System Planning. Members created five distinct roadmaps and related resources that describe how the building blocks of historically siloed resource, distribution, and transmission planning processes can be reconfigured for greater alignment, increased transparency, and more robust stakeholder engagement. 

NASEO and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) co-lead an initiative, Comprehensive Electricity Planning in an Era of Load Growth, that supports the development of state-led pathways toward a more resilient, efficient, and affordable grid that meets current and future electricity needs across the U.S. Participating members have engaged in a creative, educational, and collaborative process to develop multiple approaches for aligning distribution, resource, and transmission planning to satisfy new loads. Topics have included forecasting, modeling, planning techniques, and both demand- and supply-side options for meeting projected load growth. Since the initiative launched in 2025, members from 28 Public Utility Commissions and State Energy Offices in 24 states and Washington, DC have joined. For more information or to get involved, contact Kirsten Verclas (NASEO) or Danielle Sass Byrnett (NARUC). 

  • NARUC-NASEO Initiative: Comprehensive Electricity Planning in an Era of Load Growth factsheet, July 2026
  • NARUC-NASEO Comprehensive Electricity Planning in an Era of Load Growth Roadmaps, July 2026
    • Three roadmaps produced by NARUC and NASEO members describe visions for best-in-class comprehensive electricity planning, shown in flowcharts and descriptive text. Each roadmap shows an ideal sequence of steps across combinations of distribution, resource, and transmission planning with descriptions of information flows and coordination points. The resulting flowcharts and roadmaps are intended to be accurate, practical, and reflective of current and emerging industry best practices that any state can use. The roadmaps available now are:
      • Emerald: Vision for integrated distribution system planning and connections with bulk power system planning for states with utilities in organized markets that do not own generation assets (restructured states)
      • Jasper: Vision for integrated distribution, generation, and transmission planning for states with utilities in organized markets that own generation assets (vertically integrated within RTOs/ISOs)
      • Topaz: Vision for fully integrated transmission, generation, and distribution planning for states with utilities outside of organized markets (vertically integrated)
Earlier Resources

From 2018 to 2020, 15 state teams of NARUC and NASEO members developed innovative visions for how electricity system planning could be improved through NARUC-NASEO Task Force on Comprehensive Electricity System Planning. Members created five distinct roadmaps and related resources that describe how the building blocks of historically siloed resource, distribution, and transmission planning processes can be reconfigured for greater alignment, increased transparency, and more robust stakeholder engagement. Resources developed include:

  • NARUC-NASEO Task Force on Comprehensive Electricity Planning factsheet, February 2021
  • A recording and presentation highlighting the outputs from the Task Force shared with 2021 National Council on Electricity Policy Annual Meeting attendees. The presentation included an introduction to modern integrated and comprehensive planning, state agency roles in comprehensive electricity planning, and stakeholder perspectives.
  • Blueprint for State Action supports states seeking to further align electricity system planning processes in ways that meet their own goals and objectives. The Blueprint provides a step-by-step approach for states to develop and implement a plan or series of actions to better align planning processes, based on the experience of Task Force member states.
  • Task Force Cohort Roadmaps describe five distinct visions for an ideal comprehensive electricity planning process created by Task Force members. The process is viewed from the state perspective on how to align or integrate distinct planning processes that, historically, have not significantly informed one another. Each roadmap explains one vision for aligned planning, including both procedural and analytical steps, alongside points of evidence for innovative approaches that appear in the vision. The five cohort roadmaps are:
  • Standard Building Blocks of Electricity System Planning Processes two-page brief shares information about the color-coded framework cohorts used to describe Task Force visions for aligned planning processes in consistent terms.