The Western Resource Adequacy Program (WRAP) represents a tremendous opportunity for the western United States to improve regional coordination and leverage resource diversity for enhanced reliability while reducing customer costs. With this opportunity, there are outstanding questions, including how policymakers should be thinking about WRAP in the context of utility-level resource planning activities such as Integrated Resource Plans.

This paper seeks to provide insights relevant to planners and policymakers as the program moves closer to its operational kickoff. The paper provides a summary of the WRAP, discusses how WRAP may be integrated into state resource planning and procurement frameworks, and highlights opportunities and key issues to be considered in the future.