Ari Peskoe

The legislation would not give FERC “nearly as broad” authorities as it currently has with pipeline siting, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, in an email. “FERC has exclusive authority to site all interstate natural gas pipelines … This bill would give FERC only backstop siting authority for electric transmission and only in regions designated by DOE,” he said.

No less an advocate than Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative was clear with respect to the PJM auction (although he made the comment prior to the results being announced) when he told Bloomberg: “The market has been trending toward renewables, but this is pulling it back. It’s fighting the future.” PJM’s recent capacity auction — in which 3,414 additional megawatts of natural gas cleared (compared to 312 additional megawatts of wind and 942 additional megawatts of solar) — will do nothing to slow PJM’s tilt towards traditional fuels.

“Of course, any mandate would be a legally and politically controversial. … is this a fight FERC wants to take on now?” said Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative, in an email.

Calling the history of transmission expansion anti-competitive is an understatement. In a forthcoming paper in the Energy Law Journal, Ari Peskoe, director of the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative, describes how local transmission monopolists maintain the status quo by capitalizing on FERC rules that insulate their projects from competitive pressures on the backs of captive ratepayers. Concluding that the “FERC regulated planning process is a protection racket,” he argues that FERC should reclaim its transmission agenda by expanding the role for third parties in transmission planning.