Due to increasing weather emergencies and security issues, there will probably be many more instances of "islanding," buildings and developments which can generate their own power when the rest of the grid goes down.  I suspect that over the next decade this trend will contribute to rethinking electrical capacity zones from the bottom up and the top down.

Given the resilience of the conventional 'wisdom' regarding government regulation it may be utopian to think that it is realistic to develop a coordinated plan to provide the needs of a region comprising several states with different political leanings, especially if this impacts perceived potential profits for powerful private players. But were a substantial portion of the power for these 'islands' to be from local sources that are always in use - solar, wind, tidal, etc. that would be a net gain for system resilience.

Power independence could also be part of any state incentives for installing zero emissions power generation for homes and businesses. "Reduce your power bill and make yourself more secure." We found out the hard way just how difficult it can be to have NO electrical power during a 5 day outage due to an ice storm in '09. Though we had a highly efficient gas powered furnace it needed a few hundred watts of power to run the fans. Fortunately, we have a wood burning stove in the living room, but at the end of three days the nighttime temperatures in the peripheral rooms was dropping down close to freezing and, had the outage continued longer, we could have had frozen pipes.

But gasoline powered generators can be problematic.  On the third day I had sat in line to get a 5,000VA generator, the engine of which worked fine, but which would not generate electricity. On the fourth day I returned it and got my new 6,500VA generator going. In 24 hours it went through almost 10 gallons of gas costing around $30. If we ever again have a prolonged outage we will probably only run the generator for a few hours a couple of times a day.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

...consistently alert such activists to these kinds of meetings so that they can begin to understand the problems and solutions being offered by industry a little better.  The states, the utilities, the electric power industry are all actively working to retire old plants but need to be able to guarantee a secure supply of electricity throughout the region in all conditions.  If activist groups like 350MA want to be more than noisemakers, they need to understand the issues more deeply and offer their own alternatives, alternatives that make practical and business sense.  It is my observation that the industry will welcome their participation in such forums if they come without banners and listen as well as speak.

This is an excellent point that needs to be widely understood in the activist community.