Connecticut has selected 25 small clean energy and energy efficiency projects totaling 402 MW to negotiate power purchase agreements with the state’s two electric distribution companies.
The Class I projects, all less than 20 MW each, responded to a request for proposals earlier this year. They will negotiate PPAs with Eversource Energy and United Illuminating as part of Connecticut’s legislative mandate to decarbonize its electric generation resources.
Wind Turbine | CTEWD – Get Into Energy CT
“The response to the RFP for small-scale clean energy projects was robust and competitive — giving us the welcome challenge of carefully considering more than 100 projects and evaluating them against our established criteria,” Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Robert Klee said in a statement Nov. 28.
Included among the 25 projects are 11 totaling 170 MW within the state: nine solar, one wind and 34 MW of energy efficiency offered by Eversource, making it both a resource supplier and the EDC negotiating procurement.
“DEEP and the state Attorney General’s office will play a role in development of the efficiency contract,” DEEP spokesman Dennis Schain told RTO Insider. “Also, all contracts have to be reviewed and approved by our utility regulatory body, so there are protections for ratepayers in this project from Eversource having been selected.”
Besides the 11 Connecticut projects, seven have been selected in Vermont, two each in Maine, Massachusetts and New York, and one in New Hampshire. The projects range in size from 3.5 MW of wind in Connecticut to two solar projects of 19.99 MW in New York.
Final contracts will be submitted to the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority for approval, which is expected in early 2017.
Connecticut also is part of a separate procurement with Massachusetts and Rhode Island for large-scale projects of 20 MW or greater. The states selected seven projects totaling 460 MW for contract negotiations. However, those negotiations have been stayed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals following a challenge by Allco Renewable Finance, a developer of small-scale renewable projects. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for Dec. 9 (Allco Finance Limited v. Klee, 16-2946). (See Court Halts New England Clean Energy Contracts.)
FERC Declines PURPA Case
In a related matter, FERC ruled Nov. 22 against initiating an enforcement action against Connecticut regulators over Allco Finance’s claims that the state was not abiding by the mandatory purchase requirements of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (EL16-115, QF16-362, et al.).
The commission’s action means Allco and its unit Windham Solar may file their own enforcement action against the PURA “in the appropriate court,” FERC said.
Allco contends the state regulators improperly concluded that Windham is not entitled to a legally enforceable obligation at a forecasted avoided cost rate and that Eversource has no need for capacity.
PHILADELPHIA — The next wave of clean-energy innovation will require collaboration as well as competition, says a researcher for the Near Zero energy policy advocacy group.
Speaking at a lecture series sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy last week, Dan Sanchez, a postdoctoral scholar at the Carnegie Institution for Science, said sharing intellectual property and allowing open access to research data are catalysts necessary for growth in the clean energy industry.
“There’s actually some really strong empirical work that shows that connectivity between the private sector and the public sector really does improve innovation outcomes and really does improve the chances that publicly funded research results in commercially successful products,” he said.
Sanchez focused his argument on two initiatives, one an institutional effort and the other creating a roadmap for successful implementation of technology. The technological initiative focused on developments in bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
The institutional effort focused on Mission Innovation, a 23-country commitment established in 2015 to double their annual combined public funding of clean-energy research and development from $15 billion per year to $30 billion per year by 2021.
Consistency is Key
He identified three “waves” of clean-energy investment in the past 70 years that failed to take hold permanently: nuclear energy following World War II; nuclear, renewables and energy efficiency in response to the oil crisis of the 1970s; and renewables, carbon sequestration, efficiency and grid upgrades in the 2000s.
Following each spurt of investment, there was a “dramatic retrenchment” in private funding as projects failed to deliver on their promises, he said.
“I think the lesson of the past two waves of energy innovation is that capricious funding — funding that ramps up and then ramps down very quickly — can really stall the pace of innovation,” he said. “Following World War II, the U.S. and the European Union in particular really focused on research and development of nuclear energy technologies. … We really kind of settled on standardized technology pretty quickly, and then dramatically reduced our R&D funds.”
Sanchez sees Mission Innovation having the potential to spur a fourth investment wave and says a clear, consistent path will be necessary to sustain it. That will include a centralized, independent headquarters, along with public visibility of R&D expenditures and better coordination among countries. For example, the U.S. and China have been collaborating for the past eight years on clean energy research centers, but in the past five years, no joint patents have been filed nor have any projects truly been jointly funded, Sanchez said.
“Essentially, the U.S. funded their technologies; China funded their technologies. They shared a little bit of information, but it really wasn’t joint, collaborative R&D in the way we’d really like to see,” Sanchez said.
BECCS
Sanchez focused on BECCS as a likely candidate for the next investment wave. He pointed out that just one facility in the world — an Archer Daniels Midland corn-to-ethanol plant in Decatur, Ill. — is employing the technology to sequester about 1 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, accounting for about 1/10,000th of the worldwide reductions that are estimated to be necessary.
“It’s fair to say there’s a very large gap between where we want to be and where we are right now,” he said.
Critics have said experimenting with sequestration could delay deployment of emissions technologies and even provide tacit acceptance of additional emissions. But Sanchez said that perspective misses the “market opportunity” that could be created by planning the development and deployment of the technology — essentially creating a roadmap for its successful implementation.
Next Steps
Sanchez said whether researching technologies or getting them deployed deserves more focus is the wrong question. “I think a lot of people frame this as an either/or question, but I think it’s silly … because it’s pretty obvious we really need both,” he said. “There’s not really enough time in the day to really fight those fights.”
He pointed to gasification of coal and biomass as technologies with high commercial potential because of their ability to balance carbon-reduction product costs and scale facilities. However, the necessary research will require collaboration among public and private organizations. He offered as a successful model the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which coordinates the work of 13 federal agencies and industry groups in addition to performing regulatory and public outreach.
Combining lessons learned from the BECCS and Mission Innovation initiatives, Sanchez said, could “fill the gap between our ambitions and where our technologies lie right now.”
Arkansas Public Service Commissioner Lamar Davis has resigned to take a newly created position as executive director of government and regulatory affairs for MISO’s South Region.
Beginning Dec. 1, Davis will serve as MISO’s main liaison with state regulators, lawmakers and governors within MISO South, the RTO said Nov. 28. Davis resigned from the PSC effective Nov. 25.
Davis is the third former state regulator to join MISO’s staff since last year, following Vice President of Government and Regulatory Affairs David Boyd, who joined the RTO in 2015 after eight years on the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, and former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chairman Andre Porter, who resigned to become vice president and general counsel in May. (See Former PUCO Chairman Andre Porter Joins MISO.)
“MISO is truly honored and excited to have Lamar join our team,” said Todd Hillman, vice president of MISO’s South Region. “We look forward to Lamar representing MISO South and the work we are doing to facilitate collaboration among state regulators, policymakers and stakeholders.”
Prior to his appointment to the PSC in January 2015, Davis served eight years as deputy chief of staff under former Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe. Davis was also an assistant attorney general in Arkansas’ Consumer Protection Division, taught consumer law at the William H. Bowen School of Law in Little Rock, Ark., and served as a law clerk for the Arkansas Court of Appeals.
“These roles have afforded me the opportunity to work with countless public servants to serve the people of Arkansas, which has been very rewarding,” Davis said in a PSC statement. “I now have been offered a position in the private sector that will afford me the opportunity to champion policies to help advance the goals of our beloved state and region.”
Davis received his law degree from Bowen and a bachelor’s in political science from Dillard University in New Orleans.
New York’s highest court ruled Monday that the Indian Point nuclear plant is subject to state coastal waters rules — a potential hurdle in Entergy’s bid to extend the plant’s operating licenses.
The unanimous Court of Appeals ruling said that Entergy must obtain a Department of State permit under the state’s Coastal Zone Management program. Indian Point Units 2 and 3 are on the banks of the Hudson River, 30 miles north of New York City.
“In sum, the Department of State’s interpretation of the exemptions in the Coastal Management Program, and its conclusion that Entergy’s application to relicense the nuclear reactors at Indian Point is subject to consistency review, are rational and must be sustained,” the court said.
New York’s CMP, adopted in 1982, includes protections for fish and wildlife while also “meeting public energy needs in an environmentally safe manner,” according to the opinion.
License Extensions
The plants were licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the early 1970s and are operating under extensions while the commission reviews their applications for 20-year license renewals.
Entergy applied for the license renewals in 2007 and initially conceded that its application was subject to the state review under the CMP. In 2012, however, Entergy changed its position, arguing that the plants were grandfathered.
The court disagreed, saying that relicensing applications require new permits. Nuclear power plants’ use of state waterways is listed as a regulated use.
Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant
“Entergy is reviewing the court’s decision to determine its next steps, which could include refiling its Coastal Zone Management application that Entergy previously withdrew pending issuance of the NRC’s final supplemental environmental impact statement,” the company said in a statement. “Notwithstanding this court decision, we continue to believe we will ultimately be successful in obtaining a CZM permit and relicensing Indian Point. The facility continues to safely operate in a manner that is fully protective of the Hudson River and in compliance with state and federal law.”
The 16-page decision overturned a previous ruling from an Appellate Division court, which sided with Entergy.
The state’s objections to Indian Point will now be considered as part of the record for federal relicensing. However, if the state eventually denies a coastal certification, the plant owner could appeal to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which could override the state’s action, according to the decision.
Entergy also has a concurrent challenge pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. It sued New York in January, claiming the state’s attempts to require a CMP review intrudes on federal jurisdiction.
According to Entergy’s 2016 Form 10-K, New York is citing “nuclear safety concerns.”
That is a persistent complaint after a series of mishaps occurred in recent years at the plant.
“Indian Point is antiquated and does not belong on the Hudson River in close proximity to New York City, where it poses a threat not only to the coastal resources and uses of the river, but to millions of New Yorkers living and working in the surrounding community,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.
Entergy also has been challenging New York’s contention that closed-cycle cooling would be the “best technology available” for addressing concerns over the impact of the nuclear plants’ cooling water intakes on aquatic life.
The company has estimated that retrofitting Indian Point with cooling towers would cost more than $1.2 billion. The company proposed as an alternative the use of cylindrical wedgewire screens at an estimated cost of $250 million to $300 million.
Because of the uncertainty over whether it will succeed in relicensing, Entergy said it may enter into fewer unit-contingent forward sales contracts for output from the plants.
The Organization of MISO States was unable to achieve consensus on a response to a five-question survey asking how MISO should revise its cost allocation procedures, Wisconsin Public Service Commission staffer Randel Pilo said Tuesday.
During the Nov. 22 OMS Board of Directors conference call, Pilo said that although state regulators were not able to reach unanimity on possible revisions to MISO’s cost allocation methodology, the discussion was a “helpful exercise.”
In multiple recent stakeholder meetings, MISO expressed a desire to work on cost allocation revisions through 2017 and implement the change by 2018, when Entergy’s integration transition period — which limits cost sharing in MISO South — expires. (See MISO Stakeholders Propose Changes to Market Efficiency Cost Allocation Process.)
The RTO circulated a five-question survey on market efficiency project cost allocation in October, which asks:
Should MISO allocate all costs to benefiting local resource zones for economically beneficial projects lower than 345 kV?
Should MISO investigate additional quantifiable benefit metrics in addition to adjusted production costs for market efficiency projects?
Should MISO allocate all costs to benefiting local resource zones for economically beneficial projects lower than 345 kV?
Should MISO allocate all costs to benefiting transmission pricing zones for economically beneficial projects lower than 345 kV?
Should MISO allocate all costs to a blend of benefiting local resource zones and transmission pricing zones for economically beneficial projects lower than 345 kV?
Pilo said states are “nervous” about a blend of allocation to local resource zones and transmission pricing zones.
MISO will share and go over individual state responses at the Dec. 13 Regional Expansion Criteria and Benefits Working Group meeting and use input to make a conceptual proposal.
Pilo also noted that the questions were close-ended, and some states used an all-no answer strategy in the hopes of getting MISO to pay attention to their written responses.
“Moving forward, MISO has built in a year’s worth of time … and is planning on filing a process with FERC in December 2017,” said David Carr of the Mississippi Public Service Commission.
OMS Executive Director Tanya Paslawski also said work continues on the organization’s 2017 strategic initiative document, which identifies long-term goals similar to the 2016 document. Paslawski said the new document is set to be approved before the new year.
Paslawski also said OMS will adopt a banking resolution Dec. 1 to allow incoming OMS president and Indiana Utility Regulatory Commissioner Angela Weber to sign off on banking transactions. OMS voted to approve Weber as president at its annual meeting in October. She will replace current president and Michigan Public Service Commission Chair Sally Talberg in January.
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday he has an “open mind” on humans’ role in global warming, appearing to soften his campaign pledge to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement.
Trump made his comments in an interview with editors and reporters of The New York Times.
Asked by columnist Thomas Friedman if he would “take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change,” Trump responded that he is “looking at it very closely,” adding “I have an open mind to it.”
“I absolutely have an open mind. I will tell you this: Clean air is vitally important. Clean water, crystal clean water is vitally important. Safety is vitally important,” Trump said.
Editorial page editor James Bennet asked, “When you say an open mind, you mean you’re just not sure whether human activity causes climate change? Do you think human activity is or isn’t connected?”
Trump responded: “I think right now … well, I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies. You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now.”
Methane flaring | Bureau of Land Management
White House correspondent Michael Shear followed up with a question about the potential of foreign leaders to impose tariffs on American goods to offset the carbon that the U.S. had pledged to reduce.
“I think that countries will not do that to us,” Trump responded. “I don’t think if they’re run by a person that understands leadership and negotiation, they’re in no position to do that to us, no matter what I do. They’re in no position to do that to us, and that won’t happen, but I’m going to take a look at it. A very serious look. I want to also see how much this is costing, you know, what’s the cost to it, and I’ll be talking to you folks in the not too distant future about it, having to do with what just took place.”
Trump did not specifically mention EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which he has vowed to block. Still, his moderate tone was a marked contrast to his previous bombast on global warming.
In a 2012 tweet, he called climate change a hoax created “by the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” During the campaign, he said he would “cancel” the U.S.’s involvement in the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. (See CPP, FERC’s Bay, Honorable Among Losers in Trump Win.)
But in a video released Monday, Trump also made clear that he will steer a different course than President Obama on energy policy, renewing his promise to “cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal.”
Trump and the Republican Congress could use the Congressional Review Act to cancel some of the Obama administration’s most recent regulations, including a Nov. 15 Interior Department rule requiring oil and gas producers to use “currently available technologies and processes” to cut methane flaring in half at oil and gas wells on federal and Native American lands.
The act allows an incoming Congress to reject regulations finalized within 60 days of the end of either the House’s or Senate’s sessions.
The Congressional Research Service has concluded the act would apply to regulations finalized after May 30, if Congress holds no more sessions this year, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
In contrast, an EPA regulation intended to reduce methane gas leaks was finalized on May 12, making it likely exempt from being reversed under the act, the Post reported. EPA said the rule, designed to reduce methane emissions from new or modified oil and gas wells, will prevent 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2025.
A consumer advocacy group filed a complaint with FERC on Monday saying PJM’s recent rate-increase request is “unprecedented” and failed to consider mitigating costs by limiting employees’ pay increases (ER17-249).
Public Citizen’s Energy Program, based in D.C., filed the complaint in response to a member fee increase that PJM stakeholders approved in October. (See “Members Committee Endorses Revised Fee Hike,” PJM Markets and Reliability and Members Committees Briefs.)
It asks FERC to deny the rate filing “until PJM offers options on controlling certain expenses.”
The complaint argues that the largest factor necessitating the increase is accommodating PJM’s projected 4.8% average annual growth rate in the financial compensation paid to PJM employees over the next eight years.
“PJM already commands premium salaries paid to its employees, particularly to its top executives,” the complaint contends. “For many of Public Citizen’s members, it remains a tough economy. There aren’t many industries or companies within PJM’s service territory that are projecting a 4.8% annual growth rate for employee financial compensation over the next eight years.”
| PJM
“The impact on consumers of PJM’s proposed administrative rate revisions is 7 cents a month, phased in over eight years,” PJM spokesperson Paula DuPont said in an emailed statement. “Consumer advocates representing the PJM region support our proposal and were involved throughout its development. The proposal was unanimously approved by members.”
Public Citizen argues that neither PJM nor its stakeholders — which include state consumer advocates — “ever formally considered dampening growth in employee compensation as a measure to mitigate the rate hike.”
West Virginia Consumer Advocate Jacqueline Lake Roberts defended PJM’s request in a response to the complaint, also filed Monday. Consumer advocates are “active participants” in PJM’s stakeholder process and aren’t treated differently than other members, Roberts wrote in the response.
“As the steward of consumer interests, [Roberts ] takes rates and proposed increases very seriously,” the response reads. “[Roberts] believes that the stated rate as filed will ensure that consumers continue to benefit from these services. For these reasons, [Roberts] submits that the allegations of Public Citizen are erroneous.”
A representative of the Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate was on PJM’s Finance Committee, Roberts noted, and the committee considered several proposals before unanimously endorsing the one filed with FERC — however, all of them assumed cost increases that necessitated rate increases.
While Public Citizen’s complaint said PJM employees “deserve praise and respect for administrating duties on behalf of FERC under the Federal Power Act,” it also noted that PJM’s audited financial reports indicate employee financial compensation grew from more than $98 million in 2011 to more than $124 million in 2015, for an average annual growth rate of 6.1%. Over this five-year period, employee compensation grew from 35.6% of total PJM expenses in 2011 to 37.4% in 2015.
PJM’s request doesn’t detail other “concerning” expenses, the complaint says, such as payments to outside political lobbying organizations and “expensive social events available to select PJM members.”
Public Citizen says it has tried to become a voting PJM stakeholder, but it can’t afford the RTO’s $2,500 annual membership fee.
“It’s certainly easier to balance budgets if you can tap into a pile of someone else’s money to close the gap,” Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen’s Energy Program director, said in an emailed statement.
“The right thing to do would be for PJM to shrink its out-of-control growth in executive pay,” he said. “FERC should not allow PJM to pay for excessive executive compensation through an unprecedented hike in electric rates paid by household consumers. PJM must learn fiscal discipline and recognize that its salary structure is bloated.”
With winter looming, FERC last week adopted a rule that would double the “hard” offer cap for day-ahead and real-time markets to $2,000/MWh in every RTO and ISO.
Order 831 was a response to the 2013-2014 polar vortex, which caused natural gas price spikes that left some generators in the Northeast complaining they were unable to recover their costs (RM16-5).
The commission also noted that the $1,000/MWh offer caps effective in most RTOs could suppress LMPs below the marginal cost of production “given that recent history demonstrates that resource short-run marginal costs can exceed” that cap.
“We find that the currently effective offer caps may prevent a resource from recovering its short-run marginal costs, which could result in that resource operating at a loss,” the commission said in its decision to adopt the rule.
The commission’s revised offer cap rule sets out three requirements:
Incremental energy offers must be capped at the higher of $1,000/MWh or a resource’s cost-based energy offer, with $2,000/MWh being the maximum bid.
An RTO must verify the costs underlying a resource’s bid above $1,000/MWh before that offer can be used to calculate the market-clearing LMP.
All resources — regardless of type — will be eligible to submit cost-based incremental energy offers in excess of $1,000/MWh.
The final rule modifies FERC staff’s original proposal, which would have converted the current $1,000/MWh cap into a “soft” cap — without implementing a new hard cap. (See FERC Proposes Uniform Offer Caps Across RTOs.)
The commission said the absence of a hard cap could be problematic for RTOs and their market monitors, who might have only “imperfect information” ahead of the market clearing process to verify the short-run marginal costs for resources bidding above $1,000/MWh.
“While a hard cap may diminish the ability to fully address the shortcomings of current offer caps identified above in all circumstances, we find that, on balance, a hard cap is necessary to reasonably limit the adverse impact that any imperfect information during the verification process could have on LMPs,” the commission said.
Opposing the rule was CAISO, which said that the current $1,000/MWh ceiling far exceeds the highest cost-justified offer from any ISO resource. CAISO further contended that any natural gas-driven price spikes would be too infrequent and short-lived to warrant a change. ISO-NE said it saw no need to increase the cap, but it didn’t contest the rule change.
Market monitors for ISO-NE and SPP also protested, arguing that new sources of gas supply have provided sufficient stability in fuel prices in recent years.
The commission dismissed those contentions, pointing out that three RTOs — PJM, MISO and NYISO — had made previous filings to temporarily waive or change the level of their offer caps.
“The waiver requests and high natural gas costs experienced during the polar vortex, which could have caused some resources to experience costs above $1,000/MWh, demonstrate that the deficiencies of current offer caps, in particular the $1,000/MWh offer cap, are concrete rather than hypothetical.”
In its Nov. 17 presentation to the commission explaining the rule, FERC staff made the case for applying the change to all organized markets.
“Adopting the same offer cap structure in each RTO and ISO would avoid seams issues that could arise if offer caps differ materially across markets,” staff said.
The new rule will be effective 75 days after publication in the Federal Register.
FERC on Thursday gave final approval to a rule updating its processes for the handling of Critical Energy Infrastructure Information (CEII), a measure to protect the grid from terrorist attacks (RM16-15, RM15-25-001).
The rule (Order 833) is intended to comply with the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. Although the bill mainly dealt with highway funding, Congress added the CEII provisions (Section 215A of the Federal Power Act) following controversy over the agency’s security procedures.
The order establishes rules for designating information as CEII; prohibits unauthorized disclosure of CEII; and sets penalties for FERC employees who knowingly and willfully make unauthorized disclosures. FERC said the final rule “largely adopts” the proposals in its June Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. (See FERC Proposes Protections on CEII.)
In response to concerns raised by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, FERC clarified that its rule “does not limit the discretion of other federal agencies to protect sensitive information in their custody” but provides a way for agencies to consult with the commission’s CEII coordinator.
“We believe this change strikes a reasonable balance by recognizing other federal agencies’ discretion to protect their information, while adhering to the statutory framework that limits CEII designation authority to the commission and” the Department of Energy, FERC said.
The commission also said it would make a change to clarify it has delegated to the General Counsel authority to decide appeals of CEII designations.
Penalties
The rules include sanctions for unauthorized disclosures of CEII by commission staff and a requirement to refer improper disclosures by commissioners to the Energy Department’s Inspector General. FERC commissioners and staff could face dismissal and criminal prosecution for improper disclosures.
The commission said it has already instituted requirements that former employees and commissioners certify that they are not unlawfully removing records from the agency and acknowledge potential criminal penalties for doing so.
The FAST Act’s CEII provisions were both a vindication and a rebuke of former FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff’s controversial campaign to raise awareness of the grid’s vulnerability to sabotage.
Wellinghoff | FERC
The sanctions for unauthorized release of CEII stemmed from Wellinghoff publicly discussing a confidential FERC analysis on the grid’s vulnerability to physical attacks. But the bill also included measures to protect the grid from terrorist attacks and natural disasters, giving the secretary of energy emergency powers and creating a Strategic Transformer Reserve. (See Transportation Bill Includes Grid Security Measures.)
Sharing, NERC Information
The rule requires recipients of CEII outside of FERC to sign nondisclosure agreements. FERC said it will continue to “balance the requestor’s need for the information against the sensitivity of the information.”
“The commission has utilized this balancing approach effectively in response to Critical Energy Infrastructure Information requests for almost 15 years.”
Order 833 also implements the commission’s June order giving FERC access to NERC’s transmission availability data system, generating availability data system and protection system misoperations databases. (See FERC to Look over NERC’s Shoulders on Reliability.)
The commission said it will treat information downloaded from NERC databases as nonpublic. It will evaluate whether it should be designated as CEII in response to a request for the information or if the commission determines such information should be disclosed.
FOIA Improvement Act
In a separate order, FERC also approved a final rule implementing the requirements of the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 (RM17-5).
The law requires federal agencies to:
Allow a minimum 90-day period for Freedom of Information Act requesters to file an administrative appeal — up from 45 days.
Include in any FOIA denial letter a notice that the requester may seek dispute resolution services from the Office of Government Information Services in the National Archives and Records Administration.
Provide requested information unless “the agency reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by an exemption” or “disclosure is prohibited by law.”
Make reasonable efforts to segregate and release nonexempt material by redacting protected information in documents.
Release records 25 years or older that would otherwise be subject to the deliberative process exemption.
Make information that has been requested and disclosed three times publicly accessible in an electronic format.
LA QUINTA, Calif. — The future of U.S. nuclear energy policy was the subject of a spirited Oxford-style debate at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners conference last week.
The resolution under debate: Retaining all U.S. nuclear capacity is essential to maintaining reliable, cost-effective, environmentally responsible service.
The event kicked off with an audience poll showing 48 respondents in favor of the resolution, six opposed and three neutral.
“Perfectly mirroring the population at large,” joked Ralph Cavanagh, co-director of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which opposes construction of new nuclear plants.
Cavanagh then addressed the audience, largely consisting of state utility commissioners.
“I’m going to point out to you that you’ve been rejecting that resolution with your feet for the last 40 years,” he said. “You’ve been right to do it, and you should continue to do it.”
Retaining all nuclear capacity is just one of many options available for ensuring a low-emission, cost-effective, reliable supply of power, Cavanagh contended.
“The nuclear option should compete with other low-carbon options and not be declared the winner in advance,” he said.
Cavanagh’s opponent was Michael Shellenberger, president of the pro-nuclear, climate change advocacy group Environmental Progress, who said the loss of nuclear power impedes decarbonization by increasing the role of coal and gas-fired generation.
Checkered History
Cavanagh reviewed the history of nuclear power development in the Pacific Northwest — specifically the Washington Public Power Supply System debacle in the early 1980s. WPPSS defaulted on $2.25 billion in bonds after more than $20 billion was spent to construct plants eventually deemed unnecessary for the region.
Since U.S. nuclear output peaked in 1990, the inflation-adjusted price of electricity has only fallen — as have emissions and consumption, Cavanagh said. There are 99 reactors online today, versus 112 then.
And the reactors still in service are getting old — averaging 36 years.
“Life extension past 40 is certainly possible, but it often requires significant investment and refurbishment,” Cavanagh said. “Energy efficiency projects are meanwhile continuing, and wind and solar are putting pressure on giant baseload units as they gain market share.”
While Cavanagh didn’t advocate for full-scale nuclear retirements, he said the financial viability of U.S. nuclear plants should be examined on a case-by-case basis.
One example of a plant requiring retirement, he said, is California’s Diablo Canyon, whose relicensing would have required Pacific Gas and Electric to invest 10 cents/kWh in refurbishments.
“That almost certainly puts the plant out of the money in the zero-carbon inventory we’re trying to build,” Cavanagh said. “A plant of that cost, that size, that inflexibility … becomes a liability, not an asset, in the continuing energy transition.”
‘Pre-Emptive’ Retirements
Shellenberger countered that the “pre-emptive” retirement of nuclear plants has resulted in a decline in clean energy’s share of total global output, despite the increase in renewable resources.
In California, power plant emissions have declined less than the national average since 2000, with that effect being especially pronounced since the passage of state climate legislation in 2006, Shellenberger said.
“People don’t like nuclear very much — they’re afraid of it,” Shellenberger said. “It’s a little bit more popular than coal, but I don’t think people fear coal in the same way as nuclear. They don’t think that they’re going to have to evacuate or that they’re going to get cancer” from a coal plant.
This belief persists despite the fact that a study published by the British medical journal The Lancet showed that nuclear is the safest way to generate power, Shellenberger said. “There’s really no debate about nuclear safety among people who study public health,” he said.
Shellenberger said that nuclear’s unpopularity translates into solar getting 140 times more in subsidies than nuclear generation, according to a 2013 U.S. Energy Information Administration report. Wind gets 17 times as much.
“I used to think that maybe environmentalists were naive in thinking that you can power the world on solar or wind,” Shellenberger said. “They’re not. When you actually read the documents, every time, they are pushing fossil fuel plants instead of nuclear because [Cavanagh] and the NRDC and Sierra Club know full well that you can’t power hospitals and cities and societies on intermittent sources of power that generate electricity just 20 or 30% of the time.”
Energy Efficiency not a Resource?
Shellenberger also derided claims that energy efficiency programs can be considered a resource and that they are responsible for flat electricity consumption in California in recent decades.
“Why didn’t it go up like the rest of the country?” Shellenberger asked. “Because we lost all of our manufacturing jobs due to high electricity prices and because we don’t need as much heating and cooling.”
Shellenberger “is painting a pretty dour picture of the global power sector, and in some ways he’s right,” Cavanagh responded. “And I’m here to cheer him up.”
Cavanagh said two things can change dramatically for the sector.
“One is just how fast these small-scale, fast-acquisition resources [such as solar and wind] can grow, and how quickly they can change a picture — national and international — that looks relatively dour right now,” Cavanagh said. “And the other is the contribution of energy efficiency, which [Shellenberger] says is not a resource.”
On the subject of subsidies, Cavanagh said, “When a nuclear power proponent complains about renewable energy subsidies, I have to say I feel like I’m being lectured on temperance from a barstool.”
Shellenberger countered that nuclear power received about 10 years of subsidies. On the question of speed of scalability, he pointed to a recent report appearing in the journal Science that showed that the fastest increases in the growth of carbon-free electricity have occurred during the scale-up of national nuclear programs.
“When you take [a nuclear power plant] offline, you’re giving a lease on life, not just to natural gas, but to coal,” Shellenberger said.
The debate concluded with a second audience poll on the original resolution. The result this time: 66 in favor and 22 against — a 75% majority for the pro-nuclear side, down from 84% at the beginning of the session.
Based on Oxford rules, Cavanagh could claim a debate win. But the argument over nuclear energy’s role will undoubtedly persist.
