FERC’s Clark Looks to States for Help with Regional Markets

EnergyWire reports, “FERC’s Clark looks to states for help fixing dysfunctional markets.”

It is, I guess, a reasonable impulse. Given the way regulatory authority over the electric power industry is currently divided between the feds and the states, there are limits on what the one can do without the other. We saw in the fate of FERC Order 745, on demand response, evidence of the conflict: the court found that FERC’s rule encroached on states’ exclusive jurisdiction. States have also seen their efforts constrained (as, for example, the failure of New Jersey’s effort to subsidize investment in generating capacity).

FERC Commissioner Tony Clark is no stranger to state regulatory perspectives, having served nearly a dozen years on the utility commission in North Dakota, finishing as chair, and a year as president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC). Still, looking to state regulators, each elected or appointed within the political environment of local state capitals, to adjudge matters of costs and benefits on a regional basis seems to me a case of looking for love in all the wrong places.

RELATED NEWS: The Newest FERC Commissioner, Collette Honorable, was sworn in on January 5, 2015. Like Clark, Honorable was formerly chair of a state utility regulatory commission (Arkansas) and former president of NARUC.