Our electrical system was designed to expertise service interruptions as soon as per decade. That point is lengthy gone. Prior to now three years, the U.S. South has sustained two debilitating winter storms, forcing utilities to chop energy when their clients wanted it probably the most. In 2023 alone, the U.S. was hit with greater than 28 separate billion-dollar climate and local weather disasters.
Our growing old system of poles and wires was not made for this second. To fulfill it, we urgently have to create a extra dependable and resilient electrical energy grid that may climate rising local weather impacts and the shortcomings of fossil fuels.
COMMENTARY
With three newly sworn-in commissioners, now could be the time for the Federal Power Regulatory Fee (FERC) to set its sights on a sturdy, nationwide transmission grid. Having just lately expanded the necessities for regional transmission planning, FERC should take the subsequent logical step to sew these areas collectively. A rule requiring utilities to plan grid growth on an interregional scale is required to fortify the majority electrical system towards a quickly altering local weather and equally fast-growing power demand.
Extra particularly, an interregional transmission rulemaking would for the primary time require regional transmission operators to plan interconnections between their grids in an open and clear matter. Ideally, it will require proactive planning that creates connections wanted to reliably accommodate future circumstances. And to make sure monopoly utilities don’t block these wanted interregional connections to learn their very own energy vegetation, it will require a minimal stage of switch functionality between areas.
The fruits of good transmission planning have broad public backing. Individuals need utilities to ship extra reasonably priced, dependable, and cleaner types of power to energy their houses and companies. In line with a 2023 Information Progress ballot, voters’ high priorities embody their utility guaranteeing dependable service (21%), upgrading growing old grid infrastructure (17%), and transitioning to renewable power (15%).
Now could be the proper time to make these hopes a actuality. FERC just lately has undergone a major overhaul, with three new commissioners just lately sworn in. The brand new commissioners can hit the bottom operating and choose up the place their predecessors left off.
As an legal professional with the Southern Environmental Legislation Heart, I now characterize clear power advocates earlier than FERC, however I beforehand labored on the Fee at a time of comparable turnover. There, I helped advise a re-shaped Fee because it pivoted from one landmark rulemaking on electrical storage sources to a equally formidable rule on distributed power sources. This new FERC can equally be taught from the teachings of its current previous and go one step additional.
Fortuitously, it has the appropriate particular person on the helm to take action. Chairman Willie Phillips grew up in an environmental justice group in Alabama and holds a novel understanding of the challenges the South faces to offer equitable entry to wash and dependable power. Certainly, communities in his dwelling state at present pay among the highest month-to-month electrical energy payments within the nation.
After his appointment in 2023, Chairman Phillips outlined his three principal priorities: reliability, electrical transmission, and environmental justice. True to his phrase, FERC has taken motion to handle these priorities previously yr. In Could, FERC launched its last rule on regional transmission planning and price allocation, Order No. 1920, which mandates that utilities plan regional transmission on 20-year, forward-looking foundation. The identical day, FERC issued Order No. 1977, which permits the Fee to allow sure interstate electrical transmission strains if a state has not accomplished so. And final summer season, Order No. 2023 took impact, which reformed the method for brand spanking new energy vegetation to hook up with the grid. Lastly, FERC held a roundtable on environmental justice final yr and is anticipated to quickly observe that up with new steerage on environmental justice issues. An interregional planning rule would proceed and construct on this current progress.
Understandably, some have questioned whether or not these orders will stand after the Supreme Court docket’s ruling in Loper Vibrant Enterprises v. Raimondo. The Court docket’s resolution to overturn the longstanding Chevron doctrine in late June will restrict the deference courts give federal companies when deciphering ambiguous statutory language. Consequently, FERC’s authority to require broad reforms to transmission insurance policies is definite to be challenged. Nevertheless, the Federal Energy Act grants FERC broad authority to switch transmission practices the place it finds that present practices are unjust, unreasonable, or unduly discriminatory.
Latest developments have given it loads of purpose to make this discovering. Utilities, particularly within the South, have a patchwork transmission system with restricted connections to their neighbors. This has left them unable to offer clients with dependable service within the face of accelerating excessive climate disruptions and energy demand. Winter Storm Elliott, which resulted in blackouts throughout Tennessee and the Carolinas, supplies probably the most speedy instance of this deficiency. Whereas fuel vegetation all through the area failed, inflicting energy outages to hundreds of thousands of consumers, bordering areas had an excessive amount of wind energy to make use of. The dearth of grid connections between the areas prevented utilities within the South from taking benefit.
If this ample supply of fresh power had been made accessible to the Southeast by means of stronger interregional transmission ties, the area might have averted these outages. A 2022 GE Power Consulting research conducting a warmth wave and a polar vortex simulation discovered that “[i]n the face of frequent and excessive climate occasions, interregional transmission growth can enable entry to technology that in any other case wouldn’t have been accessible and minimizes the chance (or within the worst case, the influence) of shedding load (i.e., blackouts).”
FERC should seize this chance by establishing an interregional planning rule. The rule ought to mirror Order No. 1920’s strategy by requiring utilities to (1) conduct forward-looking interregional transmission planning, (2) consider a broad vary of financial and reliability advantages, and (3) contain stakeholders. Lastly, the rule ought to set up a minimal quantity of interregional switch functionality that each one utilities should meet to make sure they don’t put shareholder income above dependable service to their clients.
The brand new FERC could make actual and lasting change to our present transmission system, which is able to enhance the lives of all Individuals by making power extra reasonably priced and fewer weak to service interruptions.
—Nick Guidi, Southern Environmental Legislation Heart Legal professional, represents SELC companions in electrical energy issues earlier than the Federal Power Regulatory Fee, and coordinates technique for wholesale market reform within the Southeast. He shapes nationwide transmission and generator interconnection coverage and participates in regional transmission planning processes. Within the PJM Interconnection stakeholder processes, which have an effect on energy customers in 13 states together with Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, Nick represents clear power pursuits.
