The U.S. accounts for 15% of the world’s total GHG emissions, making it the world’s second largest emitter.
Only 28% of U.S. GHG emissions are attributable to the electricity sector.
Today, 22% of America’s 1,047.6 gigawatt (GW) utility-scale, electric generation capacity is renewable, while 67% of our electrical capacity produces GHG emissions. In 2050, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projects that 60% of the generation mix will still produce GHG emissions. Replacing this projected emitting capacity with pollution-free renewable power will require nearly 30 GW of additional renewable capacity each year between 2020 and 2050, a roughly 50% increase above the current growth rate of U.S. renewables.

Qualifying technologies should include all current and future resources that meet emissions criteria, including enabling technologies like energy storage and expanded interstate, high-voltage transmission that accesses clean energy resources.

Since energy is an unavoidable expense, putting a price on carbon could also, at least initially, have a disparate impact on lower-income households. To prevent that outcome, any equitable carbon pricing program should be designed to avoid economic regressivity. One possible solution is to return revenue from carbon pricing to citizens in the form of a pro-rata carbon “dividend.”

Additionally, Congress should clarify federal backstop siting authority by restoring Congressional intent of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which would encourage and accelerate investment and development of needed transmission infrastructure when that infrastructure is in the national interest and advances the objectives of a comprehensive climate plan.

The move comes in response to Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta’s call to create a code of conduct among OMS representatives — all of whom are state utility commissioners — governing how they transition into jobs in the industry they regulate.
“We’re asking for the OMS to consider adopting a code of ethics or a code of conduct policy,” Skrmetta told fellow regulators during a Board of Directors meeting Nov. 19 as part of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ annual meeting in San Antonio.
OMS leaders said the organization will begin the effort by examining state rules on post-employment restrictions before it decides to move forward with developing any policy.

Skrmetta said he was raising the issue after former OMS President and Missouri Public Service Commissioner Daniel Hall left both posts to become the central region director for the American Wind Energy Association earlier this month. Skrmetta said he took issue with the fact that there was no downtime before the transition and that the move wasn’t announced ahead of time.
“The turnaround is instantaneous,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious we have to take some steps.”

There can be no debate that our energy future will require more diversity in energy resources, particularly renewable resources. We are witnessing a worldwide, long-term and comprehensive movement towards renewable energy in general and wind energy specifically. Wind energy provides great promise as a source for affordable, reliable, safe, and environmentally-friendly energy. The Grain Belt Project will facilitate this movement in Missouri, will thereby benefit Missouri citizens, and is, therefore, in the public interest.

“We are excited to have Daniel on our team,” said Amy Farrell, SVP Public and Government Affairs for AWEA.  “His legal and technical expertise, along with his years of experience in regulation at the state level will help us work toward AWEA’s transmission vision of an increasingly connected, national grid.”
 
Hall will be responsible for policy concerning the efficient and affordable integration of wind energy, including consideration of seams issues between Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), RTOs and similar Independent System Operators (ISOs), are electric power transmission operators that coordinate, control, and monitor multi-state electric grids across much of North America.
 
“Wind energy has been a remarkable growth and success story, especially in our part of the country,” Hall said.  “But for that growth to continue, we need to update America’s electricity grid to meet 21st century needs. I look forward to bringing together state utility commissions, federal regulators and RTO’s to make that happen.”

“Avoiding the appearance of impropriety is an important goal for this body,” Skrmetta said. He suggested OMS adopt a recusal mechanism or require members to disclose extracurricular tasks that might conflict with the aims of their offices.

Kentucky Public Service Commissioner Talina Mathews suggested OMS begin the effort by taking inventory and comparing each state’s existing code of ethics on post-employment policies, a task the board assigned to an informal board subcommittee.

Skrmetta said initiating a code of conduct would create protections for OMS and create an “absolute armor plate” for the organization. He also argued that as AWEA’s central region director, Hall was active in MISO states immediately after leaving OMS.

Thomas suggested OMS might add some boilerplate language that directors are bound to their state’s individual code of ethics.


OMS President Matt Schuerger asked the subcommittee to wrap up its research in time for the board’s January meeting.
“It’s a reasonable question that’s been put before us,” he said, promising more discussion.

Because the revised phase-down schedule actually phases the credit "up" for projects beginning construction in 2020 (when compared to projects beginning construction in 2019), taxpayers who may have taken steps to begin construction on projects during 2019 to secure the 40% credit prior to the ultimate PTC expiration date, are likely to be frustrated to learn that they would have been better off delaying their construction efforts until 2020.
Nonetheless, because the determination of when construction of a project has begun is intensely factual and is subject to extensive IRS guidance, taxpayers overseeing projects that are otherwise on the cusp of the "beginning of construction threshold" may be able, with a careful planning, to structure their project and future transactions, so as to allow construction associated therewith to be treated as having begun in 2020 rather than 2019. Successful planning in this regard could translate to significant benefits associated with use of a 60% PTC rather than a 40% PTC.

“Trump and FERC are selling us out to the fossil fuel industry. They are adding billions of dollars in subsidies for coal, oil, and natural gas at the expense of green jobs and our health. They will now be getting over $6 billion a year just from our PJM grid alone, in addition to $15 billion a year in direct federal subsidies and all types of indirect subsidies. These dirty industries cannot compete with cheaper and cleaner renewable energy, so they are looking for a massive subsidy at our expense. This will hurt green jobs and public health,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.

Fenwick Island resident Tom Brennan asked why consideration isn’t given to putting windmills closer to Indian River Inlet, and “continuing the commercialization up there instead of ruining of what we have down here?”
Ms. Dudley Eshback referred to periodic flooding at Fenwick Island State Park. “Should the proposed major power transmission plant be flooded following one of these regularly occurring and increasingly frequent storms imagine the public safety impact. It could be very disastrous,” she said. “We must explore alternative, clean sources of energy. And I’m not an expert on wind energy, turbines or transmission stations but I do know it is folly to consider further developing and destroying what little open space is left.”

• Policy makers in the United States and its several states and municipalities and in Canada and its several Provinces, Territories, and municipalities are urged to review and improve the regulation of the infrastructure that comprises the electrical grid, to (1) streamline processes governing economic and environmental reviews of projects where possible, (2) promote economic and energy efficiency, (3) deliver important environmental benefits, and (4) ensure equitable sharing of the cost of needed infrastructure, as appropriate;
• As applicable, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, and state economic regulators should assess the need to improve upon and revise regulatory processes and corresponding regulations and policies governing the planning and cost allocation of high voltage electric transmission, balancing the public's interest in expedition, cost savings, care of the environment, and an equitable sharing of burdens;
• U.S. States and Canadian Provinces and Territories that adopt renewable electric generation (fuel) requirements for their domestic utilities and other generators should, at the same time, recognize and take into account the extent to which such policies necessitate the development of additional transmission lines and/or the deployment of advanced technologies;
• Canadian and U.S. industry leaders and public policy makers must ensure that investment in grid infrastructure in both countries responds effectively to threats from extreme weather and cyber intrusion.
  

“The turf wars and feuds between RTOs are legendary; MISO and SPP, these people, for reasons that are often lost to the mists of time, they don’t really like each other that much, and they don’t work well together,” Skelly said. “So the notion that FERC’s going to pass something that says, ‘Hey, you guys, coordinate and work together’ … come on. It has not happened, and it’s not going to happen.”

In a later panel, MISO President and COO Clair Moeller disputed that, saying, “I’d submit we don’t actually have a planning problem. We have an objective problem. The reason we don’t get the answers that everybody agrees with is that people’s objectives are different.
“Lanny and I had a fistfight in the bathroom because RTOs don’t get along well,” he joked, referring to Lanny Nickell, SPP senior vice president of engineering, who was in the audience. “Well, that’s simply not true. The simple fact is the objectives are different.

Skelly also described the confusion that state regulators have to endure when being pitched multiple interstate lines. “We need policy mechanisms so that the RTO shows up and FERC shows up. Somebody needs to show up from some sanctioned body to say, ‘Yes, this makes sense.’”
But FERC commissioners “hate telling state regulators what to do,” Gensler said. “That is a fate worse than death for most FERC commissioners.”

“For the United States, the integration with Canada, and the opportunities for getting additional carbon-free electricity is absolutely essential” to reaching the targets under the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, said Ernest Moniz, former secretary of energy under President Barack Obama. “We have to get the infrastructure to support it.”

He talked about “an absolutely beautiful case” under Section 1222 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Clean Line Energy Partners’ Plains & Eastern Clean Line. “It was a beautiful example to implement, and the only problem was called ‘Arkansas.’”

As a potential solution, Skelly pointed to Sen. Martin Heinrich’s (D-N.M.) announcement that he would introduce bills to create an investment tax credit for “regionally significant” transmission projects and to direct FERC “to improve its interregional transmission planning process.” Heinrich, however, has been introducing similar legislation since 2015 to no success.

“Where this is right now, I have floated this with people across the industry who have done this type of work, and they have said it would make a real difference,” Heinrich told E&E News in a brief hallway interview.

Heinrich said the general framework of his bill would enable an investment tax credit for transmission development that meets a “regionally significant” threshold.
Such an incentive, he argued, would represent a more cost-effective way to help promote transmission development than other measures, although the New Mexico Democrat admitted he’s still working out the exact bar for how much the credit would be worth and what projects would qualify.
The need for additional transmission lines to help move power from rural outskirts to more heavily populated corridors has increasingly come to the forefront of energy planning and the push to add more renewable energy onto the grid.
“It could potentially be a game changer,” Heinrich said. “We are going to have to build a lot more transmission to have a completely green grid. You have to be able to move those electrons from where they are generated to where they are used.”

That infrastructure has hit hurdles, both political and regulatory, that have added years and millions of dollars to development, resulting in the abandonment of more than one high-profile transmission project.
An example is the proposed Plains and Eastern Clean Line project, a $2.5 billion, 705-mile transmission line from Oklahoma to Tennessee to deliver up to 4,000 megawatts of wind electricity. It stalled last year after running into individual state permitting problems.

Aimee Ghosh, an attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman who has tracked recent pro-storage legislation, said the broad support among interest groups and companies is a major indicator of the potential success of storage legislation.
“You’re seeing a broad coalition outside of Congress with various interest groups, stakeholders in the energy industry, really in agreement that this is needed, good policy and good for America. And you don’t really see, like you would with other types of legislation, anyone who’s overtly opposed,” she said, noting that the legislation is technology- and fuel-neutral.

The topic came up Wednesday in a discussion involving the Public Service Commission and wind industry representatives, who told regulators that the issue is causing companies to think twice about locating a project in the state.

Wind companies are having a tough time obtaining approval from grid operators to build new projects. Proposed wind farms -- and other types of power generators -- must first undergo an engineering study to determine their impact on the grid and identify any necessary updates to power lines or other parts of the transmission system.
Sometimes, developers learn that their projects will prompt upgrades with a hefty price tag in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, said Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance. The cost currently falls entirely to the developers putting forward the projects, though the upgrades can provide benefits to others.

"We felt like this is stacked against the little guy because utilities are not willing to invest in infrastructure.”

But stakeholders for months have been criticizing those estimates as seriously underestimating the widespread adoption of renewables. Several have said the RTO’s predictions are resulting in inadequate new transmission projects and leaving renewable developers with prohibitively expensive interconnection upgrades as system patches.
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That existing process is blind to the fact that many others in MISO benefit from interconnection upgrades, she said.
“We all know transmission will bring a variety of benefits to a variety of beneficiaries,” McIntire said, calling for a “more holistic” cost-benefit analysis on interconnection upgrades.