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Publish Date: September 22, 2021 | Total runtime: 33:81
Guest: Dr. Joseph “Joe” Bowring, president, Monitoring Analytics and Independent Market Monitor for PJM Interconnection
Host: Todd Snitchler, president and CEO, Electric Power Supply Association
TRANSCRIPT
[Intro theme music plays.]
Todd Snitchler, host: Reliable, affordable, cleaner electricity. That’s what Americans want. And yes, they want it all in that order, according to our polling. Competitive power markets are designed to deliver those goals, taking the burden off regulators and ratepayers to pick and choose power generation projects and pay for them out of their tax dollars and wallets. They’ve been remarkably successful since their creation more than two decades ago. But in order to work properly, those competitive power markets need the right foundation. They also need someone to oversee them to make sure everyone’s playing by the rules, and the power bought and sold reflects actual costs.
Dr. Joseph Bowring is the Independent Market Monitor for the nation’s largest electricity market, PJM Interconnection. PJM manager the flow of power for 13 states and the District of Columbia, and includes at least 65 million customers.
Joe is an economist by training, and since 1999 has served as PJM’s outside referee, looking at how the market is meeting its goals, and how policy proposals like subsidies and other energy legislation impacts the health of the market.
This is Energy Solutions, a podcast from the Electric Power Supply Association, where we unpack the stories and trends behind America’s changing electric grid. I’m your host, Todd Snitchler, EPSA’s President and CEO.
In this episode, we’re getting to know Joe Bowring and learning more about what a market monitor does and what he sees as some of the biggest challenges facing PJM and competitive power markets around the country.
We’ll dig into whether markets can deliver the emissions reductions needed to curb climate change, whether they can really incentivize clean energy technology, whether they make sure the resources needed for reliability are available, and we’ll also look at the latest major energy policy passed in the states – Illinois’ Climate and Equitable Jobs Act. The Act grants $700 million to bail out Exelon’s nuclear plants, which will be paid for by increasing utility customer bills. It’s similar to subsidies that have been passed in other states like Ohio and New Jersey and New York.
Federal lawmakers are now looking at ways to direct more support to existing nuclear plants, but according to Joe, those plants may not really need the money. And the subsidies make it hard for PJM’s markets to stay competitive, and deliver the optimal, long-term outcomes and innovation we’ll need to build the grid of the future. Here’s Joe.
[Energy Solutions transition theme music plays.]
Todd Snitchler: Joe, we really appreciate you taking time to visit with us today. So I know you’re not maybe supposed to be the cheerleader for markets, but I know that you’re a market supporter as I am. Anybody that’s spent five minutes around us, I think would probably know that. So tell me your perspective on what makes markets so great or what makes them worth having as you look at it from the electricity perspective; and then a corollary to that is, what are the challenges to that competitive market? I mean, clearly they’re under stress at the moment. So A, what makes them good? And B, what are the biggest challenges that they’re facing today?
Joe Bowring, president, Monitoring Analytics and Independent Market Monitor for PJM Interconnection: Right, so I’m an economist. So I have to start off with a bias towards markets, but I’m not, I don’t believe that markets answer all, all of our questions and markets have to operate within rules. So one of the things we say about markets and the PJM market in particular is it’s not laissez-faire. It’s not do whatever you want and everything will turn out the best. We’re not total Adam Smithians, but we do believe that markets well-designed markets operating within rules are great, great way to provide, to provide really anything. But in this case, power at the lowest possible cost. So competition drives down costs. It doesn’t drive them below the level they should be. It doesn’t drive them below with the actual level of input cost, but it drives down costs, and competitors compete to provide – profitably provide – output, and that’s really how a market works. It’s really, it’s really just basic economics.
But the reason they work is these provided a set of rules. You allow prices to emerge, and those provide incentives to individuals to be creative. And one of the best things about markets in contrast, for example, to planning across the service regimes is that you have, you have creativity unleashed.
The reason we have combined cycles is not because we have cost of service regulation, but because cost of service regulation was open to competition way back in the days of PURPA. That’s where it all began. They have provided incentives to enter. And we’ve seen a massive turnover of capacity in PJM. We’ve seen 40-45,000 plus megawatts of combined cycles, retired a lot of coal, brought in a lot of gas, all using market incentives.
When you think about it, quite remarkable. I think PJM is really unique in the scale and ability to do that across probably the world, but certainly across the United States. The point of markets is to bring customers wholesale power at the lowest possible cost. And that’s really, that’s really the purpose. And I think they’ve served that purpose. If you look at 2020 lowest prices in the history of PJM, that’s something to do with COVID, but still prices have been very, very low.
Todd: What do you say to those critics who love to say, and I’ve heard it to the point of distraction that, “Well, it’s not, it’s just an administrative construct. You know, if it were a real market, well, it wouldn’t work the way it works.” And it’s intended to be a point of derision and not a descriptor.
How would you respond to those critics? I know what I think, but I’m curious how you’d respond.
Joe: Sure, sure. I mean, so the first thing I say is every market, of any significance in the world, is an administrative construct by that definition. The New York Stock Exchange is an administrative market. Everything is an administrative market.
So what? Is the basic answer. But the other way of putting it is that markets need to have rules and every market, any significant market in the world, has various significant rules. And that’s what the tariff is about in PJM. If that makes it an administrative market, so be it. And it’s kind of going back to my initial point about laissez-faire. Laissez-faire only exists in the dreams of some economists – and fewer and fewer.
More and more economists recognize that government plays a role, regulation plays a role. You have to have rules in order to make markets work, even to allow them to work.
Todd: So let’s talk about one of the sticky issues that seems to be plaguing PJM, but it’s not unique to PJM and that’s the distorted effect of subsidies.
And I just read on the day that we’re recording that Illinois just approved additional subsidies for additional nuclear units owned by a utility and generator that’s based in Illinois. And so you were quoted very early on as saying that subsidies are contagious. I think you proved to be a prophet in that instance, which comes as no surprise.
But how do you look at the impact of subsidies? Both from market operations and in the rules construct we just talked about? How do you make all that fit as you look at it from the independent market monitor’s perspective?
Joe: Right. So, as you know, way, way back in the day, when the so-called MOPR rules, minimum offer price rules, which are a way of addressing thes subsidy issues, arose first in New Jersey and Maryland, everyone on the market side was on the same side.
PJM was on the same side; FERC was on the same side. And the idea was that you don’t want to let state subsidies interfere with the competitive market. And in that case, those subsidies ironically were to subsidize gas-fired combined cycles, which of all resources don’t need a subsidy ever because they’re clearly competitive. And that’s where we’ve seen all the new entry.
Since then, we’ve seen an evolution, an evolution of subsidies. We’ve also seen an increased recognition that the states have legal authority under the Federal Power Act, over the type of generation in their state. And they have been using that authority much more forcefully in recent years than they ever had before.
So the states reacted badly to the most recent version of the minimum offer price rule, which I thought was internally, totally logical. It was an effort to correctly define subsidies and try to protect the wholesale power markets from subsidies. But the states reacted within their authority and logically from their perspective, which is they wanted more, in some cases they wanted cleaner power, they wanted nuclear power, they wanted different things than they were getting from the market and were at least apparently willing to leave the market.
Although I think the two states with the most “viable” FRR plans, viable in quotes, most likely to leave, were Illinois and New Jersey–both of which are dominated by the owners of nuclear power plants, and both of whom were looking for subsidies. And they used FRR as the cover for subsidies.
But states for better or worse do have that authority. And once we recognize that, then the subsidy question becomes different. That is, if subsidies are the way that the states express their authority, then we have to figure out a way to deal with that as best we can. So in our MOPR proposal, we said that you need to recognize that, but we believe that nuclear plants, as well as solar and wind, really everything except for offshore wind, is currently competitive, if you define competitive properly. And that even if Illinois and New Jersey subsidized nuclear power plants, those units should be subject to MOPR, but their competitive offers are low enough that they will clear. And we think that position has been demonstrated in the last base residual auction for both renewables and nuclear plants.
So we think there’s a logical way to do MOPR, which continues to draw a line, continues to reflect both federal authority and state authority, which allows the states to do pretty much what they want and carves out one exception, which is explicitly for offshore wind, which says uneconomic resources, which in the developmental stage, are allowed to get subsidies and not be subject to MOPR. And offshore wind, as we know, is uneconomic. Quite significantly uneconomic, luckily remains so for the foreseeable future, but the states for better or worse want to pursue it. That can’t be prevented, but I think the impacts of that on markets can be isolated—and I think, can proceed with it without significantly damaging price formation or the capacity market or the energy market.
Todd: The short question is: “So what? Why should consumers care? What’s the impact of the subsidies on prices or on reliability?” From your seat, why should consumers care about it?
Joe: Right. So consumers should care to the extent of that, first of all, that they pay the subsidies directly, in addition to the explicit cost of energy and capacity. So it’s a cost which is not directly in their bill. They’re not going to realize that. So they should care about paying hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies. So that’s one reason.
The other reason is to the extent that they have any significant impact on markets, they are going to tend to undermine innovation. They’re going to tend to displace other resources, they’re going to tend to slow the transition to renewable resources.
Nuclear, at most, is going to be a transition to more renewables. The nuclear plants are pretty old and they don’t have an infinite life. So at some point they’re going to be retired and everyone needs to, who’s thinking about that, needs to think about that transition.
Todd: So as we, we look at this, like you mentioned, one of the issues that I know we sometimes struggle with, which is a patchwork of state policies—which is, it makes it less efficient in order to try and arrive at your outcome. And it seems to us, and I’m curious your opinion on, an economy-wide or certainly a region-wide price on carbon would be a more straightforward and probably more cost-effective approach. Is that something that, from your view that you think could be countenanced in the market rules and be a tool that could be used if you could get all 13 states and the District of Columbia and PJM to agree, setting aside that challenge, from an economist perspective, does that get you where you want to go and really eliminate many of these state-by-state struggles?
Joe: I think it largely does. And we have supported a carbon price, a consistent application of a carbon price for a long time. So we do think – as almost every economist apparently does – But that apparently carries no weight with those who actually make the decisions. Not quite sure why. I guess, I mean, it keeps getting characterized as a tax instead of a price and people ignore the fact that billions of dollars of revenues flow back to the consumers in the States and they’re for use by the States however they want—but yes. The short answer is yes. A PGM-wide carbon price. Better yet a US-wide. Best of all, a worldwide carbon price, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, would be great. But a PGM-wide carbon price would be great. And it would make many of these patchwork things go away. The history of regulation in the United States moved from patchwork regulation to federal regulation, for precisely the reason you said. It’s much more efficient.
Todd: Does the regression to the state-by-state approach say more about the ability to influence and secure subsidies for preferred resources, or does it really speak to the approach that trying to achieve, or actually achieving better environmental outcomes? Is that –do you sense that’s accurate? Or is that an effective tool to try to secure additional corporate revenues or improve the bottom line? Is it a little bit of both?
Joe: No, I’m happy to answer that. So we’ve said very clearly, we think in both the case of Illinois and New Jersey, the primary motivation for the FRR was nuclear subsidies. They took up 95% or more of the total revenues. The renewable part was a fig leaf, so the rational was without any question, subsidies for nuclear power plants. And as you know we don’t believe—in fact we’ve testified for this repeatedly—we don’t think nuclear power plants, in either New Jersey of Illinois, have demonstrated that they actually need them. We respect the state’s desire to have more renewables, but I don’t think that’s what’s been driving this underlying increase in subsidies. Renewables at the moment have had a tiny impact on the markets compared to nuclear power plants.
Todd: So, given all of that as background, if you were sitting across the table from policymakers or anyone, frankly, who’s involved in energy policy, what would you want them to understand about markets generally, about the impact of subsidies? What’s the value proposition behind markets and competition, and frankly, what does the public need to know?
Joe: I think the reason that the average citizen who’s had to pay for power should care about all this is because markets, as I said at the beginning, are the most efficient and effective way to reduce costs—at least the cost of wholesale power to customers. And subsidies, reduce that, offset it, and make it less efficient.
Now, every voter is a taxpayer and vice versa. So, you know, it remains to be seen how people will feel about paying the bill for some of these subsidies. Which they will eventually. But at the moment, the benefit of markets is bringing efficient competitive outcomes – that is, the least-cost outcome to customers. The purpose of markets is to make prices lower, and it’s done that very effectively.
Todd: And do you find that the mission seems to have changed, over the last, I’ll call it five years, but it’s no longer about least cost solutions? It’s about preferred list of resource solutions or a predetermined solution set and then backing into a price. Or am I oversimplifying?
Joe: Well, I think we’ve seen that at PJM and to some extent at the Commission. I certainly worry about that. I worry about what I call the “engineering approach” to markets, which is deciding what you want the outcome to be, and then engineering the market to get you that outcome. Where the outcome has a very specific price or resource mix.
Todd: Right.
Joe: We don’t have to go back very far to the Department of Energy attempt to require nuclear and coal subsidies on a very wide scale.
Todd: So, I guess with that, I think maybe we’ve talked about a few of them, but from your perspective, knowing how you view the market and the challenges that are faced there, what are the top three issues that are facing PJM? But really, I’d even ask you to broaden that if you’re willing to the competitive market structure more broadly. I mean, there’s a number of restructured markets as most folks would know. But if you had to boil it down to two or three, what would you say are the top issues that are facing PJM or restructured markets more generally?
Joe: One and it’s coming up in the stakeholder process—once again, it gets recycled every two or three years—is the structure, design of the capacity market.
Todd: Right.
Joe: And I think the capacity market has had really fundamental flaws built into it for quite some time, including the role of DR. Which really undermine it in a very significant way. And that if we’re going to think about how all this works, as we get an increased level of renewable resources, we have to sort out the capacity of market rules. We have to do it well.
Understanding the role, the contribution to reliability, of different kinds of generation is essential in order to make this work. Because if you’re a gas-fired combined cycle, 87 to 60 availability, you are a very different resource than if you were a battery.
Todd: Yes.
Joe: You know, PJM and the NRDC to the contrary, not withstanding. A battery is not a generator or a battery. A battery depends on generators. A battery cannot operate without a generator. It is nowhere near equivalent to a combined cycle. It has its role obviously, and intermittents do. And we recognize that policy is going to lead to more intermittents.
But if you don’t give the right incentives to all types of power plants, you’re going to end up with a problem. So the capacity market design, the incentives, the very definition of capacity I think is, is truly core. It’s essential that people think about it in a global sense, rather than one little special interest at a time.
And unfortunately it tends to get divided down into one little special interest at a time and you lose sight of the whole.
So the second, the second broad topic has to do with the so-called decentralized resources. So DER, behind the meter. At the moment, we’re creating incentives for resources that are in front of the meter to go behind the meter. And the incentives are not efficient. The incentives are to avoid paying for transmission distribution costs, particularly transmission costs. To avoid paying for ancillary costs, to avoid having to deal with market rules.
And those are not good incentives. So, it’s frequently thought that distributed energy resources that are, those are behind the meter or in the distribution system, somehow have magically good properties. They really don’t. They’re going to make it harder and harder for PGM to manage the system, unless, unless we sort that out.
Todd: And I think at the highest level, we’d agree with you that reliability is paramount and whatever these changes are and whatever the discussion around the various market definitions and market revisions, reliability, can’t be sacrificed. I mean, at the end of the day it has to—
Joe: Absolutely.
Todd: —be as close to a hundred percent as we can possibly be.
Joe: Absolutely. No, I agree. I mean the real question is how to price it. And what I worry about is that we say at the very beginning of the state of the market report is interestingly PJM doesn’t include competition in its core values these days, in its mission statement and the current goals that were just established.
The word “competition” appears nowhere. And we think that’s, we think that’s a mistake. I mean, reliability of course, but it’s reliability through markets. Sorry.
Todd: No, we agree with that wholeheartedly as well. It’s interesting that we are in this part of our conversation, because of course, as you’ll recall in February, there was the awful winter freeze and winter storm Yuri as it’s called.
And it became the whipping boy for those that do not support competitive markets that see Texas was a problem and it was a market failure. And that’s why we, “We shouldn’t do that. And you know, the vertically integrated model looks really good because they didn’t have any problems.” Well, it turns out that wasn’t accurate either.
But how would you respond or how do you make sure that we account for reliability in market design? Certainly in response to those critics who would say, “Well, if you’d have just done the vertically integrated model, you’d never have had this happen.”
Joe: Right. So, my friend and former colleague Vince Duane, as well as Tony Clark, put out a paper recently, somehow suggesting that something wrong –
Todd: We might have seen that.
Joe: Yeah. Something wrong with the RTO design. I just, I thought it was kind of odd. Because really the ultimate point was that somehow energy prices are going to go to zero and therefore an RTO design cannot work. Andby implication I’m assuming, given what they’ve said elsewhere, that they do think the vertically- integrated cost of service model is better.
So look, planning can always deal with it. It just doesn’t deal with issues very well and planners are always wrong. But if you overbuild and make people pay for that, I mean, all the issues that we saw under cost of service. I mean, there are, there are different ways of managing things. And the cost-of-service model, vertically- integrated, is a way to do it.
It was done for a hundred years. The reason we moved away from it was because it wasn’t least cost. Because it didn’t provide for competition. It didn’t provide for innovation. It didn’t provide for combined cycles, for example, and a lot of the other innovations in the markets. So markets absolutely can handle the reliability question.
I mean, as you said, that what happened in Texas was, was awful and unfortunate. Um, it could, I mean, some of the – PJM and other market designs are not immune from that. So everyone needs to be aware of that. If you need, it’s essential to be, to appropriately define capacity, for example. So what’s reliable capacity? To actually have physical requirements in PJM to be a capacity resource. Not, not relying entirely on the market.
And this is a case where you actually need rules. That is every, every generator should have a form of firm supply, whether it’s gas or oil, or combination, for the resources that were frequently at risk. But the same as same was true in Texas, obviously for renewables. And different people have blamed different sectors. I mean, there were failures across the board.
But I think the key thing is to define capacity properly, to provide incentives to truly be capacity. And then when you are accounting for renewables, to make sure that, really, as part of that, you’ve defined the capacity contribution properly. So I think, I mean, I think all of those things are essential.
You can never, you can never prevent, absolutely prevent a catastrophe, but you can manage it, mitigate it and make sure that it has minimal impact. And that’s clearly not what happened. I mean, I don’t claim to know everything that happened in Texas. But from talking to a lot of people and listening to a lot of things about it, there were other things that the RTO could and should have been doing, thinking about how to actually do rolling blackouts ahead of time, how to actually manage the demand for power. Whos on what circuit? Kind of having, having all that knowledge. Not turning off the power to a gas compressor station as part of a DR program. I mean, all, all those things.
You know, it’s paying attention to the details, really minding your knitting, really doing all the detailed work properly that an RTO needs to do in addition to the markets. So proper market design, proper definition of the product and handling all those planning details properly.
Todd: Right.
I asked Joe to weigh in on a new market rule in PJM, the minimum offer price rule, or MOPR, which has received a lot of discussion. The rule was intended to minimize the harmful effects of subsidies, but due to complaints, PJM recently submitted a proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reform the MOPR. At EPSA, we don’t think PJM’s proposal puts us on the right track, but I wanted to get Joe’s thoughts.
Todd: So we’ve talked about the minimum offer price rule or MOPR. We’ve kind of talked around it a bit. So the rule got a lot of criticism, but you, I think, made the statement that it was needed to keep the market competitive. Certainly we thought that that was appropriate as well. Before answering the forward-looking – can you look backward and kind of talk a little bit, how has the MOPR rule as it had been applied, actually impacted the market? And then, , how do you think the PJM proposal, assuming it’s accepted, will impact things going forward?
Joe: So right, there was a lot of “the sky is falling” talk when the strong MOPR was introduced by the Commission in December of 2019. You know, there were claims that the prices were going to go up by dramatic amounts and all this terrible stuff is going to happen.
We thought it was all hyperbole. And that’s what it turned out to be – all hyperbole. None of that happened. This is we know, I mean, it wasn’t just MOPR, but for various reasons, prices went down quite significantly. But in addition, nuclear power plants cleared, renewables cleared. So all of the terrible things that everyone said was going to follow from the MOPR did not occur.
Now it’s possible that the MOPR, a strong MOPR, would have more significant effects down the road somewhere. But I think, I think really the only resource that would not clear under any theory of MOPR is offshore wind. And that’s because it’’s uneconomic. And – but even if that were true, the so-called “double recovery”, double counting of capacity, is a tiny, tiny issue in the scheme of PJM capacity. Even with all of the offshore wind the people are talking about. And that’s a ways down the road.
So historically, I think MOPR worked more or less fine. It worked better in the – not the current, not – So the December, 2019 strong MOPR.There was a MOPR before that, which was a result of, not to get into the arcane too much, but the NRG order, which forced FERC to give up on what they had done.
But the, the MOPR before that, I think was probably the best of the MOPRs. One of the things that has done unfortunately, or incorrectly, was to focus on gas-fired combined cycles in a very strange way. I always thought it was a mistake. But that prior MOPR allowed a competitive exemption. So if you could demonstrate that you’re putting your money at risk, that was the end of the story.
And that made a huge difference. And that really took out the really negative aspects of MOPR. That is, that there were perfectly competitive resources not being allowed to compete. That was two things. One, it was picking on gas resources and cycling the definition of a competitive offer wrong.
So historically it’s really, I don’t think, I think it’s had a positive impact on markets. It prevented the original subsidies. I think it tended to provide an incentive to not do subsidies just in the meantime, but eventually that learning process, was lost. So we’ve come back to subsidies.
So historically I don’t think it had much of an effect.
Todd: Right.
Joe:Except a positive. It didn’t have a negative effect. It had, if any effect, a positive effect.
Todd: And that kind of brings us full circle back to the subsidy question. So the, you know, the $64,000 question, for those old enough to remember that show, is where do we go from here?
Joe: Right. So in case there’s any doubt about how we feel about MOPR, at least the PJM version of it. As I think, I think you quoted us in your more recent filing and maybe it was P3. What we said was that PJM markets would be better off, more competitive, and more efficient with no MOPR than with PJM’s proposed approach.
PGM’s proposal would effectively eliminate the MOPR while creating a confusing and inefficient administrative process that effectively makes it both unnecessary and impossible to prove buyer’s side market power as PJM has defined it. So we think, we think their proposal is simply put a disaster, and the markets really would be better off with no MOPR than with what they proposed.
We do think there’s a rational way forward. As I said before, if you correctly define a competitive offer, then, all resource types with the exception of offshore, wind will clear. And you create an exception for them and we’re off to the races. But it still leaves the rule in place. It does not create this contorted, impossible to defend definition of buyer-side market power.
And it doesn’t create these very strange MOPR rules. But going forward, again, I hope that people are thinking, when they’re thinking about the capacity market – and this is, I’m sure, my naivete.
Is that they will think globally about how the capacity market should be designed so that it really works for everybody. So that it deals with, you know, these so-called flexibility issues.
Todd: Mmhmm.
Joe: So that it deals with the right incentives, both to provide energy when you need it, but also to be reliable. To provide incentives to capacity to enter and exit when you need it to.
So that’s, what I’m hopeful – that’s what I truly hope for. My expectation is that people will continue to push for their own individual, desired outcomes or desired agendas. But if we all try to get there, I think that’s really what phase two of the capacity market reform should be about.
And it’s going to require some, I think, really significant changes in the way the capacity market is designed. Not, not ultimately in the sense that it’s not going to change the fact that we still have a competitive market, but some of the rules have been in place for a long time. And they’re actually hurting the capacity market.
And actually hurting – I mean, in some cases, significantly hurting generation. We’ve calculated over the years, the billion-dollar impact, multi-billion-dollar impact of DR on prices to generation. Andthey’re not substitutes. DR is a great resource, but it should be out of the market. It should be even more flexible.
DR should not pay when it doesnt take capacity, but should pay otherwise. So, yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. Again, perhaps naively, but I’m hoping for a principled re-examination of what the capacity market design really looks like.
Todd: Sure. You’ve covered the waterfront on challenges. Are you optimistic about the future of markets?
Joe: I am. I definitely am. And again, perhaps my naivete, but I really am. I think markets have demonstrated their significant power to reduce costs and to provide innovation. And they really have. And interestingly, some of the, some of the renewable organizations have recognized that. Although I think that, again, Vince and Tony were skeptical about why they did.
I think it makes perfect sense. And in fact, markets provide great incentives and a great way to get paid for, for new – for all kinds of resources. And we’re going to see more. And who knows what the optimal resource set will look like. I think there a’re going to be incentives for more hybridization, you know, combined solar, wind and batteries, so they can look more like a, like an 87, 6 generator and get paid that way.
So, I’m very hopeful. As long as we get out of the way, at least a little bit and allow markets to work and allow incentives to work. But we also have, we have all resource types trying to seek revenue through the PGM stakeholder process. And most recently the whole ELCC was an effort by solar and wind developers and battery developers to simply increase their earnings in the capacity market.
And, you know, while I understand their motivation, that’s not the purpose of the capacity market to pay you no matter what you do. So it’s just important to keep the competitive principles in mind,
Todd: On that we agree. And I think that’s a great note to close on. And so with that, Joe, I do want to thank you for taking time to visit with us.
I really appreciate your time. I know how busy you are, much like we are these days.
Joe: Yeah. Everyone is.
Todd: We know you have a vital role to play, even if we don’t always agree. And we certainly appreciate your efforts to ensure a vibrant and competitive market for all resources to participate in. And we sincerely thank you again for what you do and for taking the time to visit with us today.
Joe: No, thank you very much. And I look forward to continued dialogue with you and your organization as well as other participants in the market. So thanks very much. And to you as well, keep up the good work. It’s all critical. Thank you.
[Energy Solutions transition theme music plays.]
Todd: Power markets and the economics behind them are complicated. But if we get it right, we can see big wins toward the country’s goals of advancing a just energy transition. The decisions being made on energy policy and the way these markets operate today will determine if we continue to see the innovation, private capital deployment, and cost savings that have already moved our grid forward.
The moment is critical. PJM has a proposal to change its market design in front of FERC right now. Other questions about subsidies and the right way to reduce emissions and deploy clean energy are being debated and moving quickly at every level of government in every part of the United States.
You can find more information about competitive power markets and PJM updates on our website at www.epsa.org.
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Energy Solutions is brought to you by the Electric Power Supply Association. EPSA represents America’s competitive power suppliers, bringing about 150,000 MW of power generation resources to customers throughout the United States. Discover the power of competition at www.epsa.org.
