In the News

The IRA may reduce any real or perceived tension between wholesale markets and state policies and the need for other mechanisms to harmonize wholesale markets and state policies.

Dr. Burçin Ünel, the Energy Policy Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, joined three other panelists to discuss why the current pricing system doesn’t work and explore ways regulators and utilities can reimagine electricity tariff structures to better price DERs and encourage more efficient electricity use.

The growing threat of power outages fueled by extreme weather calls for new approaches to grid oversight, the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said yesterday, adding that utilities and grid operators should “think differently.” Sarah Ladin, an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, said FERC should “deeply scrutinize” the emissions estimates provided by project applicants, even in cases where a new gas project would replace a higher-emitting coal power plant. In general, many coal plants across the United States are closing due to market changes, she added.

FERC on Thursday proposed changing transmission planning and cost allocation processes in the first in what may be a series of initiatives to help build out the grid in response to electrification and the shift to renewable generation. Sarah Ladin, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity, said the proposal was “a modest but important step toward more efficient planning that can facilitate decarbonization.”

Considering additional information about interactions with climate change means that some reactors’ licenses might not be extended. But this reversal supports the viability and social license of the U.S.’s nuclear fleet, thereby helping to preserve a crucial zero-emissions resource for the power sector.

Better insulating homes and building without gas appliances will help, said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at NYU School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. "If you need less [energy], it stands to reason that you will feel less of a ripple when the price changes."

Justin Gundlach, senior attorney with the Institute for Project Integrity at New York University, noted that the outcome depends not just on DOE but on “the speed, ambition, and success of parallel efforts by FERC [overseeing wholesale power markets], as well as the state-level politics of specific transmission project proposals.”

Two clean energy companies have signed deals with the Empire State that could provide New York City with as much as a third of its electric needs each year from solar, wind and hydroelectric sources. But some predecessors have encountered road blocks in their quest to build out the massive infrastructure necessary to deliver the renewable energies to major load centers. Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, told Law360 on Wednesday that New York may not encounter that level of difficulty. He noted that the state already underwent a lengthy process before the Champlain Hudson Power Express — a proposed high-voltage direct current submarine line linking Montreal to New York City — began construction earlier this year. 

Critics of PJM’s minimum price argued that it increased costs to consumers by imposing a barrier for renewable energy. Wind power has been able to bid well below other sources of electricity in competitive markets. “[The] indiscriminate treatment of all state policies as inefficient and uneconomic was both legally inappropriate and economically unsound,” said Sarah Ladin, an energy attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill clarifies FERC’s authority by giving the commission the ability to overturn state objections, transmission analysts said. “This clarifies the scope of preemptive authority available to FERC,” said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “In my corner of the world it is a meaningful policy change.”