• CERAWeek
  • March 18 - 22, 2024

Reihaneh Irani-Famili

National Grid

Vice President, Clean Energy Development & Infrastructure Investment

Reihaneh Irani-Famili is Vice President of Clean Energy Development and Infrastructure Investment at National Grid, an investor-owned utility with 16,000 employees and serving more than 20 million people in the northeastern United States. Reihaneh is responsible for leading National Grid’s efforts in developing projects and partnerships to pursue a cleaner energy system for customers and communities in New England. She is also responsible for ensuring our customers across New York and New England can benefit from federal funding opportunities that have been made possible through the bipartisan infrastructure package and the Inflation Reduction Act. Reihaneh has worked in the energy industry for over 20 years during which she has led engineering design, turnaround, project management and project development teams. Experience spanning electric and gas transmission & distribution as well as oil and gas production. She believes in empowering talent to drive positive change and has carried her passion for a clean and sustainable energy future across her roles. She earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Master of Science (M.Sc.) in Chemical Engineering from University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She has a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Chemical Engineering from Tehran University in Tehran, Iran.

Sessions With Reihaneh Irani-Famili

Thursday, 9 March

  • 07:15am - 08:20am (CST) / 09/mar/2023 01:15 pm - 09/mar/2023 02:20 pm

    Permitting & Transmission: The big challenge of connecting renewables

    Power & Renewables
    The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act solidifies both wind and solar as least-cost sources of new generating supply in the United States. At the same time, these resources tend to be in different locations than existing legacy infrastructure, making transmission increasingly important to integrate renewables onto the grid and ensure a reliable, affordable electricity system. New transmission development is often slowed down by complex planning and permitting processes, cost allocation issues and legal challenges—with long interconnection queues and network upgrade costs delaying many new wind and solar resources from coming online. What opportunities and barriers are there to increasing transmission capacity in existing rights of way? What solutions are available to facilitate new transmission development? What are the roles of policymakers versus the private sector?