Playbook for Advocates and Regulators

The "Playbook for Advocates and Regulators" is a guide providing a checklist for advocates and regulators to manage cost allocation and recovery for distribution investments. It emphasizes asking critical questions during pre-filing, planning, and ratemaking proceedings to clarify risk exposure and protect ratepayers from inaccurate load or distributed energy resource (DER) forecasts.

• Cost allocation and recovery approaches act as guardrails for distribution investments by defining payment responsibilities, recovery methods, and risk distribution in the event of incorrect forecasts.
• Regulators and advocates should use pre-filing venues—such as stakeholder meetings, electrification proceedings, or working groups—to determine how costs for investments sensitive to load forecasts will be allocated among DER customers, large data center/manufacturing customers, building and transportation electrification load customers, and general ratepayers.
• During planning proceedings, it is critical to stress test the range of bill impacts and ratepayer consequences if DER uptake or load materializes more slowly than anticipated, utilizing guardrails like reconciliation rules, cost caps, or staged approvals to prevent cost shifts to residential customers.
• Cost recovery discussions in ratemaking proceedings should be linked to planning docket expectations. For backward-looking recovery, this involves assessing if specified metrics were met; for forward-looking recovery, it requires identifying the metrics investments must meet to be eligible and the guardrails available to adjust utility revenues if forecasts fail.

APA

RMI (2026). Playbook for Advocates and Regulators. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2026/06/cost-allocation-checklist-5_2026.pdf

Chicago

RMI. Playbook for Advocates and Regulators. 2026. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2026/06/cost-allocation-checklist-5_2026.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Playbook for Advocates and Regulators |date=May 2026 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2026/06/cost-allocation-checklist-5_2026.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2026playbook, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Playbook for Advocates and Regulators}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2026}, month = may, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2026/06/cost-allocation-checklist-5_2026.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }