Commissioner Allison Clements Statement
January 19, 2021
Docket No. EL16-49-004
Order: E-19
As a new member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, I join this proceeding at the end of its nearly three-year lifespan. The Commission has issued ten orders in this proceeding and numerous parties petitioned for review of the Commission’s orders, in both the D.C. Circuit and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. [1] With a significant investment of time and resources and a voluminous record behind us, all of which has failed to assuage continuing market uncertainty, the narrow issue before the Commission in today’s order is whether PJM’s filing complies with the Commission’s directives in its October 15, 2020 Order.[2] I concur with the narrow determinations in today’s order because I agree that PJM’s filing largely complies with those directives.
While I did not participate in the previous orders, I strongly disagree with the imposition of a strict minimum offer price rule in this proceeding. I believe the Commission must look forward, past the false dichotomy presented in this proceeding that implies that we must choose to either “protect” the markets within the Commission’s jurisdiction or to accommodate state public policy goals. I hope to immediately engage with my colleagues to work with states, the regional transmission operators, independent system operators and the stakeholder community to re-examine the current capacity market constructs and the interplay between state public policies and Commission-jurisdictional organized whole electric markets.
For these reasons, I respectfully concur.
[1] See, e.g., Calpine Corp. v. PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 173 FERC ¶ 61,061 (2020); Calpine Corp. v. PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 171 FERC ¶ 61,035 (2020); Calpine Corp. v. PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 169 FERC ¶ 61,239 (2019); Calpine Corp. v. PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 163 FERC ¶ 61,236 (2018).
[2] Calpine Corp. v. PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 173 FERC ¶ 61,061 (2020) (October 15, 2020 Order).