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The split ruling may have broader implications for FERC’s stance toward state-sponsored resources.

By Michael J. Gergen, Tyler Brown, and Peter R. Viola

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved ISO New England Inc.’s (ISO-NE’s) two-stage capacity market proposal, Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Policy Resources (CASPR), by a 3-2 vote, with Chairman Kevin McIntyre and Commissioners Cheryl LaFleur and Neil Chatterjee voting in support, and Commissioners Robert Powelson and Richard Glick voting against. FERC issued an order (CASPR Order) on March 9, 2018, accepting ISO-NE’s proposed tariff revisions largely unchanged. The bulk of the revisions took effect on March 9, 2018 and the remainder will take effect on June 1, 2018.

ISO-NE originally released CASPR as a set of proposed changes to its Transmission, Markets, and Services Tariff in April 2017. (Additional details can be found in this Latham blog post.) Following a series of stakeholder meetings, ISO-NE filed its proposed tariff revisions with FERC in January 2018 pursuant to section 205 of the Federal Power Act (FPA), arguing that the proposed revisions were just and reasonable and not unduly discriminatory. ISO-NE designed CASPR to balance competitive pricing in the organization’s three-year Forward Capacity Market (FCM) with the entry of state-sponsored renewable electric energy resources into the FCM.

The regional transmission organization’s proposal seeks to reconcile the increasing deployment of state-sponsored subsidized clean energy resources with competitive forward auctions.

By Michael Gergen and Tyler Brown

Proposed New Auction Process in New England

energy pylonThe ISO New England Inc. (ISO-NE), the regional transmission organization serving Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont has filed proposed changes to its Transmission, Markets and Services Tariff with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).  The proposal would create a two-stage capacity auction designed to balance competitive pricing in its three-year Forward Capacity Market (FCM) with the entry of state-sponsored renewable electric energy resources into the FCM. ISO-NE’s proposal, known as Competitive Auctions with Sponsored Policy Resources (CASPR), emerged from the New England Power Pool (NEPOOL)’s Integrating Markets and Public Policy (IMAPP) initiative. IMAPP sought to reconcile states’ efforts to deploy new generation with existing generators’ concerns that resources receiving out-of-market revenues will suppress capacity prices. ISO-NE filed the CASPR proposal on January 8, 2018 even though it fell short of the support it needed to win endorsement by a vote of the ISO’s Participants Committee on December 8, 2017. Stakeholders have until January 29, 2018 to submit comments.

ISO-NE’s existing FCM rules subject new capacity resources to a Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR), which requires that subsidized generation resources bid into the FCM’s Forward Capacity Auction (FCA) at their unsubsidized cost. The FCM contains a Renewable Technology Resource (RTR) exemption to the MOPR, which allows for up to 200 MW per year of certain renewable resources to bid into the FCA at their subsidized (i.e., below market) cost. New England state regulators have argued that the MOPR can cause electricity consumers to “pay twice”: once for the cost of capacity that clears in the FCA, and a second time for additional capacity from subsidized resources that did not clear in the FCA (because those subsidized resources were required to bid at their unsubsidized cost).