A non-exhaustive list of the most arbitrary, capricious, and outrageous determinations in FERC’s PJM MOPR order:
In no particular order . . .
(and making no predictions about litigation)
In no particular order . . .
(and making no predictions about litigation)
1 – Choosing not to mitigate federal subsidies (i.e. tax credits) because it finds FERC “may not disregard or nullify the effects of federal legislation,” while ignoring whether it has authority to “disregard or nullify” state clean energy programs.
2 – Isolating econ development incentives as the only state payment that doesn’t subject a resource to the MOPR because such payments are not related to generation while also finding that payments of any amount distort the market, regardless of the state’s purpose.
3 – Declining to subject generators selling coal ash to the MOPR because those sales are not a state subsidy while also finding that “out-of-market support at any level is capable of distorting capacity market prices,” regardless of intent (see paragraphs 66, 69).
4 – Subjecting generators selling voluntary RECs to the MOPR bc it’s hard to know whether RECs are used for compliance with state law (and therefore a state subsidy) or whether they’re used for marketing purposes. (FERC is somewhat open to changing this based on evidence).
5 – Declining to “create another administrative process to determine which state procurements are competitive in advance” (and therefore not MOPR-able) while also tasking PJM w creating dozens of offer floors and the IMM with reviewing (maybe) 100s of offers-very administrative!
6 – Requiring FERC to develop offer floors for resources whose primary function is not energy production, including facilities fueled by landfill gas and municipal solid waste and file additional offer price floors for “new technologies as they emerge.”
7 – Recognizing that for demand response “PJM may need to evaluate idiosyncratic costs for things such as lost manufacturing value when considering requests for a Unit-Specific Exemption.”
8 – Not denying the obvious -- that the MOPR will raise consumer costs -- but entirely ignoring those costs and making no effort to estimate those costs.
9 – Declining to adopt a resource specific-carve out, despite proposing it in June 2018, and not explaining why it is not adopting its own proposal despite numerous comments supporting it (and fleshing it out).
10 – Claiming the order does not “change the purpose of the MOPR, but only changes its scope” when the MOPR was initially designed to prevent market power abuse, a task at the heart of FERC’s authority, and it is now designed to block state-supported resources.
11 – Failing to acknowledge that PJM's procurement through the capacity auction no longer has any connection to resource adequacy or reliability.
12 – Declaring that its decade-old regulation of capacity auctions supersedes the industry’s oldest business models (vertical integrated IOUs and munis that build some of their capacity and buy the rest from others).
For more on what FERC's order says, see
