We told you in April about how, after years of campaigning, we’ve got a shut down date for the last coal-fired power plant in New England. And we told you in May about how we delivered all your comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) telling them to stop forward capacity payments for dirty gas!
Now, we’re meeting up with friends from across New England for the next ISO New England Consumer Liaison Group meeting on June 4 in Holyoke Mass – join us! You can meet us live and in person from 12-3:30, or sign up to participate online.
Most important, if you’re looking to get caught up on the campaign and learn how we’re going to snuff out gas in New England, now that we’ve shut down coal, you can join the no Coal No Gas coalition (including me!) for a prep session on Thursday May 30th, 7:00pm-8:30pm over Zoom.
For those of you who need a refresher, on the New England forward capacity auction, here’s the gist:
Every year the regional regulator ISO-NE holds an auction to determine what power plants will supply our electricity, and at what cost. This “auction” is a market mechanism that uses our ratepayer dollars to subsidize the oldest, dirtiest, and most-expensive fossil fuel-fired power plants. These facilities less than two weeks a year, on average. And in the auction this year, ISO-NE proposes giving nearly $350 million ratepayer dollars to these facilities, lining the pockets of investors and stalling progress toward the more efficient, more diversified, and more renewable grid of the future.
A couple of us wrote detailed comments (here’s mine) to FERC about the auction this year, and thousands of you signed on in support. You can see all the comments here under docket ER24-1290-000. We delivered all the comments to FERC and hung posters all their neighborhood (including this one) in April. And on May 23 we read a short statement about the FCA before taking action at the monthly FERC meeting.
But New England ISO has yet to respond to our comments, and FERC has yet to issue a ruling on whether this year’s auction is allowed to go forward. Interestingly, FERC did approve ISO New England’s request to cancel the next forward capacity auction – on account of ISO-NE admits that the process is so broken and unfair it doesn’t make sense to use in the future. (Though why that would make it alright for 2024 is super unclear??)
In any event, the quarterly New England Consumer Liaison Group meetings are a great chance to make ISO-NE answer questions address our concerns, and talk about what we want them to talk about. So join us in Holyoke MA on June 4 to ask them about snuffing out the region’s gas-fired power plants, and join us for a prep session on Thursday May 30th, 7:00pm-8:30pm over Zoom.
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