PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for the District of Columbia and portions of 13 states across the mid-Atlantic, South and Midwest, has drawn the ire of the clean energy industry over its proposal to prioritize large nuclear and gas projects over renewable energy projects that have waited for years to connect to the region’s electric grid.
The Reliability Resource Initiative (RRI) is PJM’s proposed plan to expedite the construction of new electricity generation projects in its service area to mitigate an impending reliability crisis the grid operator foresees toward the end of the decade as older, dirtier plants retire and demand soars due to data centers and rapid electrification. Under the proposal, up to 50 projects are expected to be permitted to meet the shortfall.
PJM believes new dispatchable generation sources, including natural gas-fired power plants, are needed to maintain grid reliability, which it says is driven in part by state-level clean energy policies such as closing coal-fired power plants.
But according to the clean energy industry, the RRI proposal unfairly allows these projects to jump the queue ahead of clean, renewable resources. Industry leaders believe that if clean energy projects were allowed to advance just as rapidly, they could mitigate the reliability crisis PJM anticipates. New non-renewable plants could also undermine state-level clean energy goals by increasing the carbon intensity of PJM’s generation mix, the industry groups said.
In a November letter to PJM executives, leaders of Advanced Energy United, the American Clean Power Association, the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition and the Solar Energy Industries Association, writing collectively as the Clean Energy Associations, questioned whether the plan, as it is currently written, will enhance reliability.
“While the RRI Proposal appears to have been designed to induce the quick interconnection of large nuclear and gas projects, it will not address the many additional bottlenecks and sources of delay, including supply chain constraints, fuel constraints, nuclear relicensing requirements, and siting and permitting challenges that would make the quick interconnection of such projects unlikely,” they wrote.
“The proposal attempts to address reliability needs through prioritization, but there is nothing that guarantees that the prioritized projects will address reliability needs.”
Jeffrey Shields, senior manager for PJM’s external communication, said in emailed comments that it was a “false characterization of the proposal.”
“Resources of all fuel types and technology can apply to be part of RRI. We do not know whether natural gas units will seek to partake. We do know that nuclear resources have declared their interest, and they provide zero emission megawatts,” Shields said. “It is not acceptable for any stakeholder to allow for the grid to fail based on financial or policy interests. We need to use every tool in the toolbox to prevent that outcome.
“The challenge of having enough supply to meet increased demand due to data centers and other factors is a national problem; it is not in dispute,” he said.
According to Shields, PJM expects to process more than 200,000 megawatts of mostly renewable projects in the next three years. “We continue to fast-track new resources; but renewable projects are not being built fast enough to keep up with the retirement of existing resources, due to alleged siting, supply-chain or other challenges that originate outside of PJM’s interconnection process,” he said.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s office declined to comment when asked if it agreed with the Clean Energy Associations’ assessment that any new natural gas plants advanced under the RRI will likely have a negative impact on the economic viability and development of clean energy projects, especially in states like Maryland that have ambitious clean energy goals.
Maryland has set aggressive clean energy targets, aiming for 50 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100 percent renewable by 2035. Clean energy groups maintain that as a net importer of electricity, Maryland’s clean energy ambitions could be undermined if PJM’s system becomes more carbon-intensive, making it harder for Maryland to reduce emissions from its electricity supply.
The RRI puts a new spin on an already fraught relationship between PJM and its stakeholders, including the clean energy industry, state governments and lawmakers, policy managers and advocacy groups.
In previous months, state governments in the regions PJM serves have joined advocacy groups in pressuring PJM to fix its broken interconnection queue, reform capacity market rules and initiate long-term planning that aligns with states’ clean energy targets to avoid unnecessary costs for ratepayers and to bring down skyrocketing capacity prices.
And just as stakeholders haggle over the best way out of the interconnection snarl and capacity market quagmire, the RRI proposal has left state governments, consumer advocates and clean energy industry scrambling to secure their interests before the proposal reaches the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) later this month.
“The reason the clean energy community is concerned is because we feel renewables are shoved out of the way to make a way for these dispatchable special fossil resources,” said Jon Gordon, a director at Advanced Energy United.
He said the letter from the Clean Energy Associations pointed out two major concerns: that the reliability crisis has not been analyzed and explained enough for stakeholders to fully understand the dynamics at play; and that it’s unclear whether the generation solutions proposed in the RRI proposal will be a cost-effective way of solving this problem for consumers and rate payers.
“We figured, this is going to happen. We can just fight it and complain, or we can try and get some benefit out of this for clean energy projects that are in the queue. So, we’re trying to negotiate some beneficial concessions with PJM for clean energy projects to move more quickly. That’s sort of what’s happening behind the scenes,” Gordon said.
He added that it was clear to him that PJM was moving forward “with this controversial proposal regardless of consequences” and that the grid operator is not concerned with the legal challenges that will likely ensue as a result.
“There’s enough clean energy in that interconnection queue to replace all the generation in the PJM system. Yes, some of it is intermittent but there are a lot of resources there that have just been sitting and sitting in the queue that has been closed now for almost two years. And PJM is letting these fossil units just down to the front in the clean energy space. It’s appalling,” Gordon said.
Consumer advocacy groups, such as the Maryland Office of the People’s Counsel (OPC), want to know if the RRI proposal can fast track certain generation solutions that can benefit transmission- and generation-constrained areas like the BGE territory in Maryland and save ratepayers from paying to keep retiring fossil plants online in view of the grid reliability needs.
“OPC is generally supportive of the efforts by PJM, such as the RRI, to revise its interconnection queue procedures to enable new and expanded resources to commence service and participate in PJM’s capacity and energy markets earlier than under existing procedures,” said OPC head David Lapp.
He added that PJM has traditionally favored major transmission solutions and doesn’t adequately consider battery storage and grid-enhancing technologies that can get more out of the existing system.
“OPC remains concerned that these reforms are unlikely to be effective soon enough to address the dysfunction of the PJM capacity market over the next several annual capacity market auctions,” Lapp said.
“Based on our preliminary modeling, we expect that adding sizable RRI projects [to the interconnection queue] would increase the risk that existing projects have costly, long-lead time network upgrades. These additional costs in some cases may be expensive enough to cause a project to drop out of the queue,” said Steven Goldman, communications director for MN8 Energy, a U.S.-based renewable energy company.
“Policies like RRI can impact the financing costs for projects,” Goldman said in emailed comments. “PJM should primarily focus on ensuring successful outcomes for the projects currently in its queue.”
Conversations among stakeholders are continuing ahead of the RRI filing with FERC, expected to happen on or around Dec. 9.
About This Story
Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.
That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.
Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.
Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?
Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.
Thank you,
Aman Azhar
Reporter, Washington, D.C.
Aman Azhar is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist who covers environmental justice for Inside Climate News with focus on Baltimore-Maryland area. He has previously worked as a broadcast journalist and multimedia producer for the BBC World Service, VOA News and other international news organizations, reporting from London, Islamabad, the United Arab Emirates and New York. He holds a graduate degree in Anthropology of Media from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an MA in Political Science from the University of the Punjab, and is the recipient of the Chevening scholarship from the UK government and an academic scholarship for graduate studies from the Australian government.
