Ari Peskoe

A Massachusetts police officer and his brother, an electrical contractor, were indicted last week for exchanging cash bribes and gifts for more than $36 million in contracts from an energy efficiency program in Massachusetts. Energy consumers in the state pay mandatory surcharges to fund Mass Save, a public-private program that is sponsored by gas and electric companies in partnership with the state’s Department of Energy Resources. Those funds help to cover the costs of energy efficiency upgrades to residential and commercial buildings. ... Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School, said that the alleged fraud scheme did not seem to be the result of an inherent aspect of the Mass Save public-private partnership. “These things happen in the utility world as they do in other sectors,” Peskoe told E&E News. “That’s not a reason to do these programs, it’s just the nature of this criminal activity that folks are looking for opportunities.

Since FERC in 2011 issued its Order 1000, partly to open transmission development to competition, SPP has completed solicitations for three regional transmission projects, including the just-selected NextEra project, which is designed to reduce congestion in the Oklahoma City area. Besides being the least expensive proposal, NextEra Energy Transmission Southwest’s project has a range of benefits compared with the other bids, according to SPP’s panel that reviewed the solicitation. ... “It’d be hard for me to imagine that the utilities wouldn’t basically carve this up amongst themselves,” [Ari] Peskoe said. “They’d have some sort of understanding of who partners up with who on certain projects.”

The Supreme Court's rejection of a Missouri pipeline's plea to review a decision vacating its permit will buoy efforts to strengthen the federal permitting process for new gas infrastructure, legal experts predicted. Although the commission still has a long way to go in gaining consensus on the more contentious issues facing pipeline permitting — notably whether a pipeline can be rejected based on the impact it has on the climate — the high court's denial represents another blow to the gas industry, which will have to step up efforts to prove the necessity of new pipelines to pass muster with FERC, according to experts. ... Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, wrote in an email that “FERC clearly has legal authority to enforce a new policy statement like the one Christie outlines in his dissent. I’m sure industry would challenge its implementation, but it’s hard to imagine a court would find that FERC does not have legal authority to analyze whether there is demand for a new pipeline when the only evidence of need is a contract between two corporate affiliates.”

There’s a big piece of land in lonely northwest Colorado where the grassy plains meet the mountains, wide-antlered elk drink from icy rivers and sage-grouse pump their chests in wild mating dances each spring. Ranch hands still ride herd on thousands of cattle and sheep here, just as they started doing 150 years ago when Texas cowboys first drove cows north into the high country. ... Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, says the U.S. grid sorely needs the TransWest line. He argues that families like the Boeddekers—who don’t live at Cross Mountain full-time—are living an energy-intensive lifestyle by definition and should be willing to accept some inconvenience. “You want to live in a world where that lifestyle has no consequences and any social costs of that should be borne by others and you shouldn’t have to be inconvenienced by seeing that from your second home?” he said. “I have zero interest in their concerns.”

President Joe Biden's struggles to deliver on his ambitious climate agenda are getting a big boost from the leader of one often overlooked agency who is scrutinizing the greenhouse gas emissions of energy infrastructure and the environmental harms facing low-income people and communities of color. Now, that official, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Richard Glick, may see his efforts to put climate change at the forefront of federal energy policy cost him his job. Glick's departure could stall FERC's work in updating transmission policies and market rules to support the development and expansion of clean energy, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. “The worst case scenario would be a split commission,” he said.

On this episode of the Building Local Power Podcast, host Jess Del Fiacco is joined by her colleague John Farrell, director of ILSR’s Energy Democracy Initiative, and guest Ari Peskoe, who is the director of the Energy Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. They discuss the attempts Congress has made to increase competition in electric utilities, the four orders the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ruled between 1996 and 2011, and the how the lack of competitive processes negatively impacts consumers.

It was a shocker. Katie Dykes, Connecticut’s commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, earlier this month got onboard with a two-year delay for a key component of her pet project — reforming the New England electric grid. ... Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, said FERC was unlikely to just say no. “It could find the current approach unjust and unreasonable under federal law and tell ISO-New England what the just and reasonable approach must be and then order ISO-New England to comply,” Peskoe said. “All that would take more time, but there is a path for FERC to reject what is going to be filed and effectively order ISO to file what was narrowly rejected.”

Only a few years ago, the federal agency that regulates the transmission of electricity, gas and other energy matters was looking into ways to prop up coal, in line with former President Donald Trump’s fossil fuel agenda. ... The long queues of projects awaiting a green light from PJM or other grid operators can be seen as good news, showing a strong interest in renewable energy, said Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School.

Last month, Entergy New Orleans revealed it was pulling funding from a vital city project to shore up the city’s flood defenses. Citing the massive cost of recovering from Hurricane Ida, the company said it could no longer fulfill its commitment to loan $30 million to the Sewerage and Water Board. Four days later, the utility’s parent company, Entergy Corp. announced quarterly shareholder dividend payments at $1.01 per share, totaling $202 million. ... But Entergy is not a typical company. It’s a government-backed monopoly, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. “It’s just a classic case of the company’s owners doing well at the expense of their captive customers,” Peskoe said. “That’s the important thing here that differentiates it from other businesses. Customers are just completely captive to Entergy.”

Scientists and international governing bodies have been very clear: In order to have a shot at limiting the worst impacts of global warming, investment in new fossil fuel projects must stop. Yet the federal body that regulates America’s pipelines has created a perverse incentive for companies to keep building methane-leaking fossil fuel infrastructure that doesn’t serve anybody except shareholders. ... The ruling was notable, and may signal a shifting view of the federal courts on FERC, explained Ari Peskoe, Director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School. “The court found that FERC had failed to justify that the pipeline was needed, which is the core determination that FERC has to make — that the pipeline is needed for the ‘public convenience and necessity,’” said Peskoe. “It’s the sort of squishy legal standard that courts are typically very deferential to regulators on. So for the court to say that FERC didn’t properly implement its own policy — that has resulted in FERC approving nearly 500 projects and disapproving of only two since 1999 — was unusual and noteworthy.”

Transmission planning needs major reforms, including loosening the grip incumbent transmission owners have on the process, a panel of experts said Thursday during a roundtable hosted by the R Street Institute, a think tank. ... In the short term, transmission operators determine who produces power and how much they produce, and in the long term they guide decisions about where to build new transmission, which opens opportunities for new sources of power, according to Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative. "So really, control over transmission is in a lot of ways control over the industry," Peskoe said.

As Justice Stephen Breyer prepares to step down from the Supreme Court later this year, legal experts are highlighting a lesser-known piece of his legacy — an impact on clean energy and electricity markets. Yesterday, President Biden formally announced Breyer’s plans to retire at the end of this court term during an event at the White House. The 83-year-old justice has served for 28 years on the high court, and four decades as a federal judge (Greenwire, Jan. 27). ... “Breyer opened the door to a practical view of FERC’s jurisdiction that is adaptable to new technologies and is not fixed by the industry structure that existed when Congress passed the [Federal Power Act] in 1935,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, in an email.

A decade after federal regulators opened the door to competition for development of large transmission projects, states — acting at the request of incumbent utilities — are slamming it shut. ... “That’s particularly true in MISO where regional projects basically disappeared as competition went into effect,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program. “One reason that’s happening is because it’s so much easier to spend your money where there’s no competition and basically no oversight than to risk going through a competitive process.”

The Biden administration’s plan announced yesterday to pump $20 billion into expansion of the nation’s transmission networks will target “shovel ready” projects that deliver clean energy, at the same time a nationwide grid expansion is planned and advanced, according to an administration official. ... DOE’s initiative could also inform FERC’s potential transmission reforms by providing additional, informed research and analyses on transmission needs, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University. Typically, FERC has relied on industry players to identify transmission solutions, even though the independent agency and others have argued that the industry has “underinvested in large-scale projects,” Peskoe said.

As Republican state officials insist that Canadian oil pipelines are necessary to lower energy costs for American consumers, the fossil fuel giant operating those pipelines is suddenly citing the climate crisis its products are creating as a rationale for raising those prices higher, according to new documents reviewed by The Daily Poster. Last month, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine—who has raked in nearly $400,000 from fossil fuel industry donors—demanded the Biden administration keep open Enbridge's controversial Line 5 pipeline, which runs under the Great Lakes, as a way to reduce energy prices. But Enbridge just dropped a bombshell undercutting that argument: The firm told government regulators that climate change means its tar sands pipeline network only has 19 years left of economic life. That assertion could allow the company to jack up the tolls that its customers pay to transport oil through its pipelines, because pipeline operators are authorized to recoup their operational costs through rate increases—and a shorter timetable means higher levies. "There is something ironic about pipeline companies like Enbridge conceding that they can see the writing on the wall, they're not going to be competitive or needed less than 20 years from today, and as a result they have to raise prices today to account for that," said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School. "There's something incongruous about that."

Willie Phillips, confirmed Tuesday night to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, is poised to be the tie-breaking vote on two proceedings that will shape the future of the U.S. power grid, electric markets and the clean energy rollout. He could vote on a market pricing rule benefiting nuclear and renewable generators that took effect in PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest regional grid operator managing the flow of power to 65 million people in the eastern states. And he’s expected to weigh in on a proposed new wholesale market created by a group of large electric utilities in the Southeast, including Southern Co. and Duke Energy and Tennessee Valley Authority. Opponents say the new market could crowd out independent renewable generators. ...“It’s a huge set of issues on the plate for FERC,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

Power producers challenging a PJM Interconnection regional market rule are setting up a legal fight that could affect the electricity mix across chunks of the Midwest and eastern U.S. ... But there are questions in energy circles about whether Phillips might have to recuse himself because his position as chairman of the Public Service Commission in Washington, D.C., meant he considered the sticky PJM capacity market issue. Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, said he doesn’t expect that to be an issue. “I say it’s low risk, because he didn’t work for the entity filing the proposal,” Peskoe said of the possibility of Phillips recusing himself.

The New York Independent System Operator's (NYISO) ROFR proposal comes as FERC is considering revising its rules governing transmission planning. Utilities want FERC to give them the right to build transmission lines in their footprints instead of opening those projects to a bidding process. ... Competition has generally worked well in New York for public policy transmission projects, according to Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. However, the proposal marks the second recent attempt by New York transmission owners to monopolize transmission that will be built to facilitate the state's clean energy goals, Peskoe said in an email.

When GreenHat Energy collapsed after blowing millions speculating on power prices, it became plain: Energy traders are essentially gambling, and ratepayers back every bet. ... GreenHat traded in a market operated by the largest of the grid keepers, the RTO known as PJM Interconnection LLC. PJM (the name originally stood for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland) directs power from 1,400 generators through 85,100 miles of high-voltage cables in 13 Eastern states and the District of Columbia. Its 65 million electricity consumers have been spared the widespread blackouts that have affected tens of millions of people in Texas and California lately, but they’ve paid for that stability. PJM is supposed to balance the interests of power companies, consumers, and communities, but for years it’s allowed major suppliers such as Exelon, Duke Energy, and American Electric Power to bill ratepayers for high-priced upgrades to sections of the grid where they predominate, according to an assortment of studies. Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, says PJM’s reliable checkoff on new projects allows suppliers to preserve their market dominance and freeze out competition. It’s effectively “a protection racket” for the biggest providers, Peskoe says.