WASHINGTON, DC – Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA) President & CEO John E. Shelk issued the following statement in response to PJM’s filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) today to protect the competitiveness of PJM’s critical capacity market auctions from state subsidies such as nuclear bailouts:
“EPSA welcomes today’s PJM filing and looks forward to reviewing it in detail with EPSA’s members.
“As events unfolding in New Jersey and other PJM States such as Illinois clearly show, the integrity of PJM’s wholesale power markets is under serious attack by those seeking unjustified state subsidies for their nuclear and coal plants.
“In response to the FERC complaint EPSA and others filed in 2016, which has been pending ever since, PJM and the PJM independent market monitor each agreed that PJM’s capacity markets are vulnerable to what the market monitor has termed contagious state subsidies.
“EPSA believes FERC must implement robust countermeasures to prevent out of market state subsidies from hurting the beneficial competition that all PJM states depend on to serve consumers. Whether that is best accomplished by either of the specific options PJM filed today, or through some other proposal that is better, will be determined by EPSA members in coming days.
“EPSA is firmly committed to persuading FERC to make this docket a very high priority if competition is to endure. EPSA has been sounding the alarm for years now. Waiting for more subsidies to be adopted before FERC acts is not an option if wholesale markets are to continue to deliver benefits to consumers.”
Launched over 20 years ago, EPSA is the national trade association representing leading independent power producers and marketers. EPSA members provide reliable and competitively priced electricity from environmentally responsible facilities using a diverse mix of fuels and technologies. Power supplied on a competitive basis collectively accounts for 40 percent of the U.S. installed generating capacity. EPSA seeks to bring the benefits of competition to all power customers.
