Green Tech Media

Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University, noted that FERC’s subsequent actions to impose even more problematic restrictions on state-subsidized resources in the capacity market of mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM may strengthen legal challenges to ISO-NE’s CASPR construct.

But experts disagreed on whether FERC can act unilaterally to order ISOs and RTOs to create something approaching a national carbon-pricing regime. Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University, argued that FERC has that authority under the Federal Power Act. Other participants argued that such a move might be open to legal challenge “absent a congressional mandate to do so,” FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee said in a Thursday press conference.

If FERC approves the petition, it “could create chaos at the state level,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University, said in a Thursday interview. An approval could open up state programs to challenges from utilities in regulatory proceedings and independent lawsuits in federal court, Peskoe said.

Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University, wrote in a tweet that NERA’s petition “seeks to end net metering as we know it.”

Can a FERC commissioner vote on a Trump administration coal and nuclear bailout plan he helped to write? Harvard’s Electricity Law Initiative says no.