"Clean energy goals and resilience to extreme weather should spur the next wave of power grid upgrades, federal energy officials and state utility commissioners broadly agreed Wednesday during a meeting in Washington.
But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s mission to overhaul a series of rules in the next year targeting transmission projects prompted concerns that consumers could be paying for more than their fair share of the expensive projects.
New lines are needed to move power from areas with wind and solar generation to states and cities with goals of consuming higher amounts of renewable energy. Climate change-driven extreme weather events require a hardening of existing lines and the ability to shift power to regions experiencing outages.
The meeting between FERC commissioners and officials from California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states cast a spotlight on perhaps the toughest questions in green-lighting grid projects: Who benefits from a new project and who should pay?"
Daniel Moore reports for Bloomberg Environment February 16, 2022.
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