Former FERC chairs praise US grid regionalization, but lament headwinds

摘要

Four former chairs of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissionpraised the agency's 20-year-old Order 2000 encouraging utilities toform regional transmission organizations but said a lack of consensuson climate change policy poses challenges to the markets run by thoseorganizations.The former FERC officials said more direction from the USCongress on how to address climate change and transmission sitingcould help FERC and regional grid operators better handle the rapidshift underway in the bulk power sector as coal-fired capacity closes infavor of expanded reliance on natural gas-fired and renewablegeneration.