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August 24, 2024

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COP27: Will Countries Step up on Climate, Financial Commitments?

The 27th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) kicks off Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with an expected 30,000 attendees all focused on reinvigorating countries’ action on climate commitments in the face of worldwide inflation, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, and growing fears of food and energy insecurity.

Host country Egypt has laid out ambitious goals for the conference, calling for action on a range of pledges made at last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, from reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, to solid progress on international financing for adaptation and “loss and damage.”

But Nisha Krishnan, lead for climate resilience at World Resources Institute Africa, sees significant headwinds going into the conference, such as escalating national debt in developing countries. “We have almost half of the [African] continent going into high debt and debt distress situations,” Krishnan said during a COP preview webinar on Wednesday, sponsored by the Environmental and Energy Studies Institute. “This is obviously influencing what is expected out of COP, as well as what can be delivered, particularly financially this year. …

“We just no longer have a climate conversation,” she said. “It has become an economics and finance conversation.”

Krishnan and other energy experts going to the conference agreed that expectations for Sharm el-Sheikh are muted compared to last year’s COP26 in Glasgow, where attendees reached an agreement aimed at keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, the goal set in the Paris Agreement in 2015.

“One of the things about this COP is that it is almost a process COP,” Krishnan said. “There are plenty of things that need to be discussed this year; that we’ll need to announce them next year or the year after. … This is where the hard work gets done.”

But Ryan Finnegan, deputy manager for U.S. climate policy at the World Wildlife Fund, believes that events and action outside the official negotiating halls could “end up being more impactful, both for the delivery of strong COP outcomes [and] achieving implementation goals on the ground.”

“Since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, we’ve seen a real robust increase in subnational and nonfederal participation and interest in tracking events that are happening at these international negotiations,” Finnegan said.

As countries move toward implementing their climate commitments amid calls for transparency and accountability, “there is interest not only at the national government level, but at the institutional and organizational level [for] using COP as a mechanism to force announcements or share progress points, to share expertise,” Finnegan said.

The U.S. delegation will include at least three state governors (still unnamed) and dozens of state officials and lawmakers, he said.

COP veteran Tracy Bach, co-focal point of the Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGOs) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), also pointed to the agenda of themed days that Egypt has organized.

“The Egyptian presidency is focusing on solutions,” Bach said. “The idea here is, in addition to what we know are the main agenda topics … they’re bringing in a wide array of experts, a fair number of them drawn from Africa as well as the global south … to keep fueling the negotiations and expanding the areas of convergence.”

The schedule includes a Youth and Future Generations Day on Nov. 10, Gender Day on Nov. 14 and Biodiversity Day on Nov. 16.

Biden, Midterms and the IRA

COP27 could also see a potential test of U.S. leadership on global climate action, with the credibility and momentum created by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and its $369 billion in clean energy funds at risk pending the outcome of the midterm elections on Tuesday.

While Republicans have acknowledged that even if they win control of the House of Representatives and Senate, they will not be able to repeal the law, they could try to pick off specific provisions, according to E&E News.

The midterm results will almost certainly be a factor in President Biden’s appearance at the conference, where he is scheduled to speak on Nov. 11. In the run-up, his administration has been rolling out programs and funding from the IRA, such as the recent $9 billion in rebates to help homeowners pay for energy-efficient home upgrades. (See related story, States to Receive $9B from IRA to Boost Home Efficiency Upgrades.)

But the IRA in and of itself me ay not be enough to build trust with some countries. Multiple analyses of the law, such as one from the Rapid Energy Policy Evaluation and Analysis Toolkit project based at Princeton University, have found that if fully implemented, the law would get the U.S. only four-fifths of the way to its 2030 goal of cutting its emissions 50 to 52% below 2005 levels.

It gives the U.S. a stronger hand going in, Bach said. But “the U.S. still has a long way to go in building trust in these negotiations.”

The IRA is “a domestic effort and has no bearing on the international climate finance piece where the U.S. might be worse in terms of its contributions,” Krishnan said.

Loss and Damage

A key test of U.S. credibility will be its position on “loss and damage,” which is one of COP27’s likely flash points between developed and developing nations. The issue turns on whether developed nations, like the U.S., which have been the world’s heaviest GHG emitters, should pay some form of restitution to developing nations that have sustained irreparable damages from the extreme weather caused by climate change.

The issue is on the conference’s provisional agenda, which has already raised concerns about the scope of any discussions, Krishnan said. The UNFCCC has appointed “two co-facilitators, which are Germany and Chile, to help lead a conversation and discussions around what this agenda item should be, such that there is no agenda fight on the first day and that the agenda is adopted,” she said.

The U.S. has dragged its feet on setting up an official structure or mechanism to finance a loss and damage fund, pushing for a watered-down statement in the final agreement at COP26, calling for “dialogue” on this issue. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry took some significant flack in September suggesting that with limited financing available from governments, funds for mitigation and adaptation should be the top priorities for international climate action.

Kerry has since backpedaled a bit. In a recent interview with Time, he said that the U.S. will take part in conversations on loss and damage at Sharm el-Sheikh and is open to talking about “potential financial arrangements” to help developing countries.

But some African stakeholders say loss and damage may not be the right approach. Speaking at an Atlantic Council webinar on Wednesday, Ayaan Adam, senior director and CEO of the Nigeria-based African Finance Corp., said the focus for international finance should be on resilience and addressing Africa’s massive “infrastructure deficit.”

“What we’re saying is, ‘Don’t build it in the old way.’ [If you] integrate resilience, you don’t have loss and damage,” Adam said. “So it’s not about loss and damage. It’s about understanding the science. … It’s a prevention, so you avoid loss and damage.”

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CAISO Reports on Summer Heat Wave Performance

CAISO got through September’s record-setting Western heatwave without blackouts by importing electricity, calling on the public to conserve energy and coordinating with utilities and government agencies, the ISO said in its 2022 Summer Market Performance Report published Wednesday.

During the 10-day stretch of triple-digit temperatures, from Aug. 31 to Sept. 9, CAISO experienced unprecedented demand, reaching a new high of more than 52 GW on Sept. 6. Demand in CAISO’s Reliability Coordinator footprint, which covers much of the Western Interconnection, set a record at more than 130 GW.

“The heat wave of September 2022 was one of the most challenging events in the history of the ISO grid,” CAISO CEO Elliot Mainzer said in a news release. “During events like these, it is important to carefully and transparently examine what went well and to identify issues to address and lessons learned that can be carried forward into future operations.”

In the report, CAISO said new resources procured since the rolling blackouts of August 2020, when demand reached 46 GW, have bolstered reliability. The ISO’s territory has added more than 3,500 MW of lithium-ion batteries in the past two years to store the ample solar power produced in the daytime in California.

Blackouts and near misses in the last three summers occurred during heat waves when solar power ramped down in the evening, but demand remained high from air conditioning use.

CAISO cited “enhanced coordination, awareness and communications internally and with neighboring balancing authority areas,” including participants in the ISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market, as another reason it was able to keep the lights on. The increased coordination extended to investor- and publicly owned utilities, the California Public Utilities Commission, the state Energy Commission and the governor’s office, it said.

Market enhancements enacted the past two years helped, too, the report said. CAISO has reworked its scheduling priorities, beefed up its resource sufficiency evaluations and adopted “market pricing designed to incentivize generation during periods of high demand,” it said.

The major factor in avoiding blackouts on Sept. 6, the most strained day of the year, was an emergency text message sent out to 27 million cell phones by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services urging consumers to conserve electricity in the face of imminent blackouts.

When the text message went out at 5:45 p.m., CAISO already had declared a stage 3 energy emergency and told utilities to arm for load shed, but it had not given the final order to start rotating outages.

Within 20 minutes of the alert, demand plummeted by 2,385 MW, to 48 GW, narrowly avoiding blackouts.

Imports from the Pacific Northwest and parts of the Desert Southwest, where the heat was less extreme, also played a large role in maintaining grid reliability, CAISO said.

“This included net imports of more than 6,500 MW during net peak on September 6 as well as an additional 1,000 MW from WEIM transfers,” the report said. “The ISO both received emergency assistance energy and provided it to other balancing authority areas experiencing stressed system conditions.”

Average daily electricity prices soared to $600/MWh with prices topping $2,000/MWh in some parts of the state. In comparison, the average locational marginal price for September was $106 MWh, it said.

Lessons Learned

The ISO said it learned lessons from the crisis that included the need to improve the use of batteries in the real-time and day-ahead time frames to optimize dispatch and ensure they are used most effectively in heat waves.

“The high prices experienced during the heat wave presented new scenarios for the ISO to learn about the complexities and challenges of managing battery state-of-charge,” the report said.

Batteries that bid above $150/MWh to charge during the day were insufficiently charged when they were needed at nightfall because of a software glitch, CAISO said.

“Despite this, ISO operators were able to position storage resources during the September 2022 heat event to meet net-peak requirements by leveraging minimum state-of-charge market functionality that was implemented as part of a package of 2021 summer readiness enhancements,” it said. “The ISO has now fixed the software issue.”

Another software problem “unintentionally curtailed higher-priority exports … while allowing lower-priority exports to flow,” CAISO said. “Although the ISO largely caught and reversed the error in high-priority curtailments, it deployed a software upgrade on Oct. 13 to ensure the appropriate export curtailment order is followed going forward.”

In addition, there was under- and over-counting of capacity in the WEIM’s resource sufficiency evaluation that resulted in CAISO failing the test two times on Sept. 6 instead of the six times it should have failed, the report said.

Because of the counting errors, “transfers into the ISO were limited, but not material,” it said. “This is because the transfer limits were well above the actual available transfers of 1,000 MW from the WEIM, so transfers into the ISO were not restricted.”

CAISO said it has corrected some of the counting problems and is exploring additional fixes.

The ISO has scheduled a stakeholder call for Nov. 17 to review the analysis and answer questions.

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Crane to Retire, Butler to be New CEO of Exelon

Exelon announced a leadership transition on Wednesday and reported “solid” third-quarter financials on Thursday.

Current President and COO Calvin Butler Jr. will succeed Chris Crane when he steps down Dec. 30 as CEO and director of the board of the Chicago-based utility.

Crane, who has been Exelon’s CEO since 2012, said he had to accelerate his retirement plans because of significant health issues.

Butler has held a series of leadership roles since joining the company in 2008. He was named executive vice president and chief operating officer in February 2022 and was promoted to his current roles just two weeks ago.

Crane presided over his final quarterly earnings call Thursday, updating industry analysts on the company’s outlook and performance, which he described as “solid.”

For the third quarter of 2022, the company reported GAAP net income of $0.68 per diluted share and adjusted (non-GAAP) operating earnings of $0.75, up from $0.47 and $0.53, respectively, in the same quarter in 2021. For the first nine months of this year, Exelon reported $1.65/share, up from $1.33 in the same period of last year.

The company narrowed its guidance for the full 12 months of 2022 to $2.21-$2.29 in adjusted (non-GAAP) operating earnings per share.

Like the rest of the Nasdaq Composite, Exelon’s stock (NASDAQ:EXC) is near a 52-week low. The share price was down 2.84% in heavier-than-average trading on Thursday as the Nasdaq Composite declined 1.73%.

During Thursday’s conference call, Crane addressed the monumental transition to clean energy underway in the electric utility industry.

Exelon, he said, is well-positioned to lead and benefit from the shift.

“Exelon offers an unparalleled exposure to that opportunity,” Crane said. “We serve more electric and gas customers than any other utility in the country in some of the largest cities of the country. We have earned the trust of our customers and our commissions by consistently reliably providing top-notch operation performance.

“And we live our values with steady commitments to our path-to-clean goal as well as through environmental advocacy and support for our communities in a strong governance model. As a result, there is a tremendous demand and support for investments we expect to make in our communities, which, as I said earlier, totals $29 billion of capital from 2022 to 2025.”

‘Privilege and Responsibility’

Crane has spent his entire career in the energy industry, joining ComEd in 1998, shortly before it became part of Exelon.

He was named Exelon’s chief nuclear officer in 2004 and took over leadership of its fossil, hydro and renewables facilities in 2007.

Crane was named president in 2008 and CEO in 2012. Under his leadership, Exelon merged with Constellation Energy and Pepco Holdings in 2012 and 2016 to become the largest U.S. energy company by customer count.

Also on his watch, ComEd became embroiled in a multiyear bribery scandal at the Illinois Capitol, allegedly forking over $61 million in return for legislation that boosted its profits and bailed out its money-losing nuclear plants. A federal investigation ultimately led to the indictment of several former Exelon executives and a $200 million fine for the company in 2020.

Crane’s successor has three decades of experience in the utilities industry and in regulatory, legislative and public affairs.

Early in his career, Butler worked in government affairs at Central Illinois Light Company. He later had senior leadership roles with R.R. Donnelley, a print, digital and supply chain company. He joined Exelon in 2008 and held various leadership roles at ComEd and Baltimore Gas and Electric before becoming BGE’s CEO in 2014.

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Bradley University, a juris doctor degree from Washington University School of Law and an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Morgan State University.

“Leading Exelon is a privilege and responsibility that I take very seriously,” Butler said in a news release. “Chris is a tremendous leader, mentor and friend. As our world has been undergoing significant change, so too has the energy industry, and Chris has been at the forefront of that evolution. At Exelon, we are uniquely positioned to lead the nation and our industry to a clean energy future that is safe, reliable, affordable and equitable for all. I appreciate the Board’s confidence in me and will do everything I can to serve our customers and communities, keep our employees safe and move the energy industry forward.”

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NERC’s DER Strategy Focuses on Industry Education, Collaboration

In a new report released this week, NERC warned that the bulk power system is in the middle of a major transformation because of the spread of distributed energy resources, creating a learning curve for which stakeholders are in danger of falling behind.

In the Distributed Energy Resource Strategy document published Tuesday, NERC said the ongoing “influx of DERs presents potential benefits as well as challenges for grid reliability, resilience and flexibility,” noting that the cumulative capacity of distributed solar facilities is set to rise from about 25,000 MW last year to more than 60,000 MW by 2031. The organization said its goal in presenting the report is to outline “current and future strategic actions” to ensure the grid can be operated reliably as these resources’ share of generation grows.

The new report is similar to a document NERC produced in September, detailing the organization’s risk mitigation strategy for inverter-based resources, a class of generators that includes large solar and wind farms. (See NERC Outlines IBR Risk Mitigation Strategy.)

NERC’s System Planning Impacts from DERs (SPIDER) Working Group has played a major role in the ERO Enterprise’s efforts to adapt the grid for the impact of DERs. The group defines DERs as “any source of electric power located on the distribution system,” which refers to electrical facilities located behind a transmission-distribution transformer that serve multiple end-use customers. In practice, this most often refers to rooftop solar panels and storage technology at businesses or homes.

DERs are attractive for end users because they offer the opportunity to reduce electric bills and provide some chance of operating independently in the event of a service outage; they can also lighten the burden on utilities during periods of high demand, decreasing the risk that interventions like load shedding will be needed. In a report issued in August, SPIDER noted that because they sit behind the meter, DERs have traditionally been viewed as a part of the distribution system only, with little or no impact on the broader bulk power system. (See NERC’s SPIDER Group Warns of Modeling Difficulties for DERs.)

However, the new report warned that the installation of these resources on the grid has proceeded much faster than BPS planners’ understanding of their potential impacts to reliability. NERC’s DER risk mitigation strategy is primarily designed to help stakeholders share their knowledge and push forward their collective expertise on the subject.

Core Tenets Underlying Strategy

The strategy comprises four core tenets. First is DER modeling; according to the report, SPIDER’s interactions with industry experts have “identified that a lack of DER modeling information, tools and established planning practices is limiting [utilities’] abilities to accurately incorporate DER models into planning assessments.” NERC said the group’s efforts in this category will primarily focus on industry guidance, but they will also require changes to reliability standards that relate to modeling in order to ensure planners have the appropriate DER data for modeling purposes.

Another tenet is to ensure that future studies of BPS reliability incorporate the effects of DERs in aspects including the pre-disturbance base case setup, selection of reliable contingencies and analysis of how aggregate DERs will respond to large-scale grid disturbances. SPIDER is currently working to develop a reliability guideline to encourage entities to account for DER growth in their studies; NERC is updating its standards to “ensure … requirements are adequate and clear on how to model, study and assess” the impact of DERs on planning assessments, with further standards updates likely to come in the future.

NERC is also studying the risks associated with the next core tenet, the operational impacts of DER — particularly as it relates to decentralization and the shift of significant amounts of generation to the distribution system. SPIDER is also developing a white paper focused on coordination between transmission and distribution entities to improve BPS reliability.

Finally, the last tenet of the strategy is the contribution of regulatory bodies, particularly FERC, to the conversation. NERC pointed to FERC’s Order 2222, which required RTOs and ISOs to open their markets to DER aggregations, as introducing “unique operational benefits and challenges for grid planners and operators” and showing that other stakeholders will not wait for the ERO Enterprise to take the lead on DERs. The report observed that further regulatory action may target other areas of the ERO’s purview, such as reliability standards, training and education, and cybersecurity.

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Enable in Rear View, OGE Looks to Improve Reliability

OGE Energy management told financial analysts Thursday that it has completed its exit from the Enable Midstream Partners joint venture with the final sale of its interest units, allowing the company’s investors to focus on “a premium electric utility business.”

CEO Sean Trauschke did not sound disappointed during the company’s third-quarter earnings call that it would be the last in which he discussed midstream financial results, saying he wanted to “take a moment to reflect on the end of what has been a decade-long effort to close this part of our business and move forward.”

OGE, and CenterPoint Energy, completed a $7.2 billion sale of Enable to Energy Transfer Partners in December 2021. (See OGE, CenterPoint Complete Enable’s Disposal.)

The company is using the proceeds from the sale to pay down short-term debt and plan for the future by protecting customers with an equal focus on reliability and affordability. It has also increased its storage positions to increase its physical supply of natural gas, one of OGE’s key learnings from the February 2021 winter storm.

“At the end of the day, we’re accountable to making sure that energy is flowing to all of our customers, and we want to control that,” Trauschke said. “We want to make sure that we’re in charge of that, and we don’t want to rely on others to support us.”

OGE reported earnings of $262.8 million ($1.31/share), as compared to $252.5 million ($1.26/share) for the same quarter a year ago, attributed mostly higher operating revenues driven by warmer weather. The earnings exceeded analysts’ expectations of $1.16/share.

The company’s share price was trading at $37.07 in after hours, a gain of 69 cents on the day.

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Multiple Seaports Needed to Support Calif. OSW Goals

To meet its target of 25 GW of offshore wind energy by 2045, California will need about 1,300 floating wind turbines, along with seaport sites to support production and operation of the massive structures, speakers said during a workshop.

Potential locations for those sites were the focus of a workshop on Monday hosted by the California Energy Commission (CEC). The commission is facing a June 30, 2023, deadline to complete a strategic plan for offshore wind, including a blueprint for improving waterfront facilities to support OSW development.

Seaport sites are needed for fabrication and assembly of wind turbine components, a process that requires sheltered harbor space, wide areas, deep, navigable water, and the capacity for heavy loads, said Matt Trowbridge, an engineer with Moffatt & Nichol, a port infrastructure consulting firm.

Other sites may serve as operations and maintenance facilities for the turbines once they’re in place, Trowbridge said during the workshop. These sites will ideally be as close as possible to the wind farms.

California will need an estimated 1,300 floating wind turbines to meet the 2045 target of 25 GW, Trowbridge said, and potentially 10 or more seaport sites to support them. One port might be able to accommodate multiple support sites, he noted.

Currently, California doesn’t have any such sites, he said.

“There is no existing port terminal on the U.S. West Coast that can currently support offshore wind,” Trowbridge said. “There’s space available in the ports, but no facility is adequate for offshore wind without significant investment.”

Searching for Sites

Trowbridge said 17 major ports and harbors have been contacted to see if they’re interested in participating in OSW and, if so, whether they have space to do so. The results of the survey are “promising,” Trowbridge said, but details won’t be released until the ports have a chance to weigh in on the findings.

Small craft harbors are also being explored as potential sites for OSW operations and maintenance.

“We’re trying to turn over every stone,” Trowbridge said. “We’re looking at every possibility to try to identify the pros and cons and the best path forward.”

But Trowbridge emphasized that the search for OSW support sites is not intended to displace existing uses. Rather, the study is looking for undeveloped or underutilized sites.

The discussion of OSW support sites comes as the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management plans a Dec. 6 auction of five leases off the Northern and Central California coasts. (See BOEM Sets California Offshore Wind Auction Date.) Two leases, with a combined potential for about 1.6 GW of wind energy, are in the Humboldt Wind Energy Area off the coast of Northern California. Three leases in the Morro Bay Wind Energy Area have a combined potential of about 3 GW.

Because the Morro Bay lease area is far from existing ports, the State Lands Commission is studying whether there’s a suitable site for a new port between the San Francisco Bay Area and Long Beach.

So far, that option doesn’t seem viable, although it hasn’t been ruled out, Trowbridge said. Much of the coastline was deemed unsuitable because it’s near a residential area, a military base, a state park or national forest, or a marine sanctuary. And while the study hasn’t been completed, it appears that building a new port in one of the remaining areas would be less feasible than developing a site at an existing port.

The port infrastructure study won’t stop at identifying potential OSW support sites. Additional steps will include looking at improvements needed at the sites and potential impacts.

Head Start at Humboldt

The Humboldt Bay Harbor, Recreation and Conservation District is actively exploring playing a role in the OSW industry, Rob Holmlund, the district’s director of development, said during the workshop.

Humboldt Bay’s Northern California location is between two wind “hot spots,” Holmlund said, and the harbor has the potential to support OSW in both the Morro Bay and Humboldt wind energy areas. The harbor lacks constraints such as limited channel width or depth, or bridges that could block turbine transport, he said.

The Port of Humboldt Bay developed a conceptual master plan for the site, which was followed in March by a $10.45 million CEC grant to prepare the bay for offshore wind. The grant will help pay for preliminary engineering and design work, site surveys and special studies, environmental impact assessments, early construction, and environmental mitigation.

Last week, the port announced it will exclusively negotiate with Crowley Maritime to develop and operate the Humboldt Bay Offshore Wind Heavy Lift Marine Terminal. The terminal will support tenants in the manufacturing, installation and operation of offshore wind floating platforms, as well as the use of large heavy cargo vessels and crewing and marshaling services in the ocean.

The agreement with Crowley involves a 98-acre Phase I, with an option for future phases.

AB 525 Requirements

Port infrastructure development is one piece of a five-part strategic plan for OSW required by last year’s Assembly Bill 525. Other sections of the plan will focus on sea space identification, transmission planning, permitting and potential impacts of OSW.

AB 525 also requires the CEC to determine the state’s maximum feasible capacity for OSW and set planning goals for 2030 and 2045.

In August, CEC adopted the nation’s most ambitious long-term offshore wind goals, with targets of up to 5 GW by 2030 and 25 GW by 2045. (See Calif. Adopts Country’s Most Ambitious OSW Targets.)

CEC will accept comments related to the workshop through Nov. 18 at 5 p.m. Comments may be submitted here.

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FERC Rejects Iowa Coalition’s Complaint over ITC Structure

FERC said Wednesday that ITC Midwest can keep the capital structure it has had in place since 2007, blocking an Alliant Energy-led complaint in the process (EL22-56).

Alliant’s coalition of Iowa utilities, industrial customers and consumer advocates in May challenged ITC’s capital structure as excessive and too skewed toward equity. They asked the commission to reduce ITC’s equity ratio to 53% and establish hearing and settlement procedures to grant refunds to transmission customers. (See Alliant Energy Leads Challenge of ITC Midwest Capital Structure.)

ITC Midwest, an independent transmission company, uses a capital structure reflecting 60% equity and 40% debt in its formula rate to calculate its overall rate of return.

FERC said the coalition did not prove that the utility’s existing capital structure is unjust and unreasonable. It ruled that ITC’s target capital structure is comparable with those used by other investor-owned MISO transmission owners and is not unusually high.

The commission also pointed to its policy of using the actual capital structure “of the entity that provides the financing, whether that entity is the utility or its parent company.”

Iowa customers argued that FERC’s approval of ITC’s 60% target equity ratio 15 years ago was “based on the expectation that ITC Midwest would have its own credit rating separate from its parent company,” ITC Holdings. They argued that both the utility and MISO have undergone seismic changes since the capital structure was approved, with ITC Midwest’s rate base increasing 550% since 2008 and ITC Holdings being acquired by Fortis, Inc.

Both the Iowa Utilities Board and the Minnesota Department of Commerce intervened at FERC in support of the complaint.

However, the commission said the Iowa customers didn’t establish that either ITC Holdings or Fortis guarantees ITC Midwest’s debt or that they would assume its debt obligations if the utility defaulted. FERC also said that contrary to allegations, ITC Midwest has a different bond rating from ITC Holdings and Fortis.

“Although ITC Midwest does not have its own management-level employees and relies on ITC Holdings’ management, this does not demonstrate that ITC Holdings guarantees ITC Midwest’s long-term debt,” FERC said.

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States to Receive $9B from IRA to Boost Home Efficiency Upgrades

With winter heating bills on the way, the Biden administration on Wednesday announced nearly $9 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to provide rebates to families for upgrading their homes with a range of energy-efficient improvements.

Announcing the new funding to a cheering crowd at a Sheet Metal Workers Union hall in Boston. Vice President Kamala Harris said the $146 million coming to Massachusetts will provide “rebates of more than $800 per household to help families purchase and install, for example, a new electric stove and … up to $1,600 per household to help families install new insulation. It means giving families up to $8,000 to replace their gas furnace” with a heat pump.

The funding connects “so many important priorities by helping families pay the upfront cost for energy efficiency upgrades to their homes,” Harris said. “We are also lowering energy bills, bringing down household costs, creating jobs and fighting the climate crisis.”

The rebate program could help to upgrade up to 1.6 million homes nationwide and install up to 500,000 heat pumps, according to a White House fact sheet. Harris estimated the savings per household at $500 a year; the Department of Energy said savings nationwide could reach $1 billion annually.

The DOE announcement provided more details on the funding, along with a list of allocations going to the states, ranging from more than $690 million for Texas to $59.4 million for the District of Columbia. Another $225 million is earmarked for a “high efficiency home rebate program” for tribal communities.

But those savings will likely not come this winter. Wednesday’s announcement allows states to “access information about their allocated funding and …  begin planning programs to distribute relief to families, using these funds,” according to the White House.

The DOE release laid out a series of steps that will be taken prior to any actual distribution of funds. A series of “listening sessions” with states and “a wide array of stakeholders” will be held over the next three months, followed by a request for information early in 2023. DOE is targeting spring 2023 for getting the money to the states, with the public receiving rebates later in the year.

“States will have greater resources to meet their consumers’ needs and more rapidly achieve home electrification on the path to a net-zero emissions economy,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in the release.

The rebate program is aimed at helping moderate- and low-income families with the upfront costs of energy efficiency improvements, Harris said.

The Details

The funding is divided between two programs: one providing home energy performance-based rebates and a second with rebates for high-efficiency home electrification, according to DOE.

For the performance-based rebates, homes that reduce energy use by 20% will be eligible for $2,000 in rebates, while a 35% cut in energy use will qualify for up to $4,000 in rebates. Those maximums will double for retrofits for low- and moderate-income households.

The rebates available for a high-efficiency electric home top out at $14,000 per household, with a $8,000 cap for a heat pump and $1,750 for a heat pump water heater, with all rebates paid at point of sale. Electric stoves and clothes dryers will also be eligible for rebates, as well as insulation and sealing measures.

The high-efficiency home rebates will also be based on family income relative to an area’s median income. A family earning 80% to 150% of the median income would qualify for rebates covering 50% of the cost of a specific upgrade, while households earning 80% or less of the median would receive a 100% rebate.

RACER

DOE also announced on Wednesday $43 million in funding for 23 projects that will “help communities plan their transition to a clean energy future and improve grid reliability and security.”

Most of the money will go to 20 projects under the Renewables Advancing Community Energy Resilience (RACER) program, which DOE said “seeks to enable communities to utilize solar and solar-plus-storage solutions to prevent disruptions in power caused by extreme weather and other events.”

For example, the Virginia Department of Energy is receiving $1 million for a project that “will identify opportunities to use distributed energy resources like solar-plus-storage in 10 different locations [in Southwestern Virginia] to maximize the benefits of energy resiliency infrastructure for disaster response needs.”

According to figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. has sustained 15 extreme weather events with losses exceeding $1 billion each. Total costs are estimated at $30 billion, with “significant economic effects on the areas impacted,” DOE said.

The other three projects will focus on “building tools to help communities better evaluate and benefit from local energy resources,” DOE said. “Researchers will develop and share planning methodologies, tools, technologies and best practices that can be replicated in communities across the country as they work to install clean energy and strengthen grid infrastructure.” 

“Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to giving local communities the tools to understand and make informed decisions about their own energy supply and needs,” Granholm said. “These critical projects will help deliver reliable, affordable energy to every pocket of America — strengthening the safety and resiliency of communities across the nation.”

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Entergy Learning from Florida to Improve Resilience

Entergy on Wednesday said it is engaging with stakeholders as it prepares regulatory filings related to its proposed $15 billion, 10-year accelerated resilience plan to upgrade its system against future storm damage.

“We’ve invested in new infrastructure built to higher standards that will improve the system’s resilience,” CEO Drew Marsh told analysts during Entergy’s third-quarter conference call. “We expect our proposed investments to significantly reduce physical and financial storm risk.”

Marsh said the plan is “heavily informed” by Florida’s recent experience with Hurricane Ian.

“We did our homework,” the new CEO said. “Knowing that their hardened assets performed well in Hurricane Ian, along with the strong performance of our own hardened infrastructure over the past couple of years, gives us confidence that we can substantially reduce our exposure to storms and provide meaningful benefits to customers.”

Drew Marsh (Entergy) FI.jpgEntergy CEO Drew Marsh | Entergy

The utility has already made its first filing, with New Orleans, where it came under heavy criticism last year after Ida took out all eight transmission lines servicing the city. (See Entergy Touts Restoration; NOLA Leaders Question Lack of Blackstart Service.)

The New Orleans City Council has already approved a $206 million securitization recovery for Entergy New Orleans’ Hurricane Ida costs and to replenish the company’s storm escrow. The company plans to file its resilience request in Louisiana by the end of the year and in Texas next year.

Entergy reported quarterly earnings of $561 million ($2.74/share), up from the same period a year ago when it delivered earnings of $531 million ($2.63). Marsh said the strong quarter allowed Entergy to cut 10 cents off its year-end adjusted earnings guidance, now $6.25 to $6.45.

The utility’s adjusted earnings of $2.84/share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.67/share.

The earnings call was Marsh’s first as CEO. He replaced Leo Denault, who stepped down on Nov. 1 and continues to chair the company’s board. (See Entergy CEO Denault Stepping Down in 2023.)

CenterPoint Exceeds Expectations

CenterPoint Energy on Tuesday reported earnings of $189 million ($0.30/diluted share), a tick down from last year’s third quarter of $190 million ($0.32/diluted share).

The Houston-based company updated its capital expenditure plan by $2.3 billion to nearly $43 billion. CEO David Lesar said the incremental capital will be dedicated to further distribution system resilience, reliability and grid modernization, and transmission upgrades in its Houston Electric area.

CenterPoint’s adjusted earnings of 32 cents/share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 31 cents, the 10th straight quarter Lesar’s management team has met or exceeded Wall Street’s expectations.

The company’s share price peaked at $28.93 on Tuesday before finishing at $28.11 on Wednesday, down 48 cents from its pre-announcement close.

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PJM, NJ Look Beyond SAA Transmission Upgrade Process

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — PJM and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) are considering how to incorporate other states in future public policy transmission upgrades, an acknowledgement that the RTO’s State Agreement Approach could benefit “free riders,” officials told a conference Oct. 28.

The BPU voted Oct. 26 to award $1.07 billion in upgrades to deliver offshore wind generation to the PJM grid in the first application of the RTO’s State Agreement Approach. The SAA allows states to sponsor transmission to support their public policy needs while requiring them to pay 100% of the costs. (See NJ BPU OKs $1.07B OSW Transmission Expansion.)

The BPU’s award will fund onshore transmission upgrades needed to integrate 6,400 MW of offshore wind, but it does not include any offshore transmission and further upgrades will be needed to meet the state’s new offshore wind goal of 11 GW. As a result, the BPU directed its staff to begin a second round of coordinated transmission planning to meet the increased goal, potentially including a new SAA solicitation.

One question that needs to be addressed is how to allocate costs for non-New Jersey projects that want to bring energy to the system through upgrades funded by New Jersey ratepayers, Kris Ohleth, executive director of the independent Special Initiative on Offshore Wind told the Time For Turbines conference in Atlantic City.

Ohleth, who moderated a panel before an audience of 125, described a situation in which “New Jersey is paying for this type of upgrade to our system, and the region benefits from offshore wind” projects using it.

Kris Ohleth Bob Brabston Asim Haque 2022-10-28 (RTO Insider LLC) Content.jpgFrom left: Kris Ohleth, the executive director at the independent Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, Bob Brabston, BPU executive director, and Asim Haque, PJM vice president, state and member services | © RTO Insider LLC

BPU Executive Director Bob Brabston, who appeared on the panel with Asim Haque, PJM’s vice president of state and member services, said the BPU is just beginning to consider the free-rider issue raised by Ohleth.

“No one wants to pay for something that they’re not getting the benefit of,” Brabston said. “And we feel like there are a lot of benefits that will flow out of New Jersey because of this. But it’s really conceptual at this point. So, in terms of what that would really look like in terms of how complex cost allocation can be, and the different perspectives among our fellow member states, it’s really early to say how that might work out.”

Brabston echoed BPU General Counsel Abe Silverman, who said in September that state officials hope to engage in “horse trading” with other PJM states over the cost allocation of transmission needed to meet their climate goals. (See NJ Foresees ‘Horse Trading’ with Other PJM States over Tx Costs.)

PJM’s Haque said the cost allocation issue is part of a “robust discussion” underway in the industry about how it can be more proactive in addressing state transmission build-out needs. “Electrons don’t know state borders,” he said.

“We’re finding ourselves in a space where there are multiple states that are actually sort of sharing similar policy initiatives, whether it’s renewable portfolio standards or offshore wind initiatives,” he said. “Generally speaking, PJM is supportive of the sort of long-term, long-range transmission planning. And we’re supportive of thinking about how the states can get more involved in determining what cost allocation should look like.”

That’s complicated because states are at “different sort of points on the spectrum,” he said.

“You’ve got states in the PJM footprint that say that we, we don’t want to pay a dime for something that didn’t arise out of our state legislature, or an executive order or whatever,” he said. “And you have some states in the middle that said, ‘Well, let’s look at all the different benefits that would arise from this project. And if some benefits would eventually find a way to our consumers, we can conceivably pay for it.’ And you have states that say, ‘You know, there are so many states that with similar policy objectives, it makes sense for a lot of our states to go at it together and share costs.’”

Cost Reductions Through SAA 

New Jersey’s process was the first time that any state has used the FERC-authorized SAA process, and conference speakers said the results demonstrate the benefits of the approach.

The BPU approved $504 million for work in and around the Larrabee substation in Central Jersey to FirstEnergy’s Jersey Central Power and Light and Mid-Atlantic Offshore Development (MAOD), a joint venture of Shell New Energies US (NYSE:SHEL) and EDF Renewables North America (OTCMKTS:ECIFY). The state also will spend $575 million for other upgrades to accommodate OSW generation.

BPU officials say that the $1.07 billion price tag is about $900 million lower than the upgrades would have been without the coordination and competitive bidding overseen by PJM under the SAA. PJM’s solicitation generated 80 proposals from 13 developers.

Without the coordinated process and competition the transmission upgrades needed would evolve through “many developers, many projects proceeding on their own timeline with their own decision making, their own priorities,” Brabston said. That could mean some benefits, such as “a lot of innovation and competition, but also a lot of duplication, no economies of scale, and a lot of impacts on communities and on the environment,” he said.

Although the BPU sought proposals for connections on and offshore, the BPU funded only onshore projects, leaving the offshore work still to be allocated. The board expects the winner of the third solicitation, which is due to take place early in 2023, to include plans for the offshore connections that will tie future projects to the upgraded transmission facilities just approved by the board.

“One of the aspects of the project that we awarded is the expectation that all of the cabling access that’s required for all of the offshore generation that we expect to award in future solicitations will come through the same landing point,” Brabston said. “And that’s a way that future developers will know with certainty where they need to come onshore, and that that particular asset will be there already constructed.”

Haque acknowledged that the SAA prompted PJM to change its own strategy.

“We weren’t always in the space of trying to figure out how to help states,” he said. “PJM was not always the most friendly to state policy endeavors. And so for us to have gone from a space where we had [BPU] President Fiordaliso say, ‘We may not be seeing eye to eye with PJM in the future’ to where we are now: We jointly figured out a path to build transmission to bring offshore wind to New Jersey consumers …. I think it’s really wonderful.”  

Helping to De-Risk

John Dempsey, CEO of Blue Point Wind, a joint venture between EDP Renewables and Engie, which won the auction for an offshore wind development lease in the New York Bight in February, said the initiative would also help developers and the industry as a whole. Speaking on a panel that focused on OSW project developments off the New Jersey coast, he said the state’s SAA was a “tremendous, tremendous effort.”

The initiative “really goes a long way at helping de-risk projects, which lowers costs,” he said. “The efforts made by the state earlier in the week, I think really go a long way at making New Jersey a really good place for offshore wind developers to land, so we were really pleased to see that.”

Dempsey, in an email after the conference, said that as states increase their offshore wind capacity targets the industry will need more “proactive transmission development” like the BPU’s initiative to make projects happen.  

Blue Point Wind, also known as Ocean Winds East, paid $765 million for its New York Bight lease, giving the developer rights to an ocean parcel 53 miles off the New Jersey Coast that is expected to generate 1,700 MW of electricity. The project will sell its power to either New York or New Jersey and is evaluating “multiple interconnection scenarios” at each location, Dempsey said.

“The BPU award offers clarity to the industry on the optimal cable landfall location and the point of interconnection for the next round of projects, and it will ensure that there is sufficient transmission capacity on the system to accommodate offshore wind,” he said. “For developers like Bluepoint Wind, this clarity will reduce uncertainties in their projects and allow them to offer more competitive proposals to New Jersey in its upcoming solicitations.”