This commentary is by Elena Mihaly, vice president and director of the Conservation Law Foundation Vermont.
The recent United Nations climate report and rapidly changing energy situation across the world have made it clear that we’re running out of time to transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean, renewable energy.
Unfortunately, here in New England, a secretive bureaucracy that few people have ever heard of has slowed down clean energy while propping up fossil fuels.
ISO-New England may be obscure, but it is powerful. ISO is the nonprofit entity overseeing the operation of the power grid for our six-state region. Funded with our families’ and businesses’ utility bills and operating behind closed doors, ISO’s mission is to keep the lights on, set the price for electricity, and — crucially — plan the future of the region’s electric system.
Clearly, there is a fourth leg missing from this chair: Where is planning for climate change in ISO’s mission? There is arguably no more important question in the world of electric generation than how we power our homes, cars and businesses in a way that does not contribute to the climate crisis.
But for ISO, it is simply not a determining factor. In fact, it’s completely missing from their mission statement, which leads to bad policy decisions that are holding back construction and implementation of solar and wind energy and energy storage projects.
ISO most recently postponed by two years a rule change that would allow renewable resources to compete with fossil fuels to power our homes and businesses. Simply put, ISO picked oil and gas over clean energy and threw a wrench into the states’ plans to clean up the grid by 2030 by claiming — erroneously and not for the first time — that we’d all face blackouts if we didn’t leave the door open to more fossil fuel consumption.
This decision comes despite a demand by all six New England states — the people who, after all, ISO was created to serve — that ISO immediately start considering climate ramifications in the decisions it makes managing the electric grid. ISO is ignoring that request.
This decision also comes during a month when the United Nations issued a comprehensive report on the damage already being done by climate change, and the grim prospects for the future if we don’t rein in fossil fuels. The report looks at the global havoc being wreaked by climate change in exhaustive depth, detailing damages occurring now, and on the near horizon, everywhere from Bangladesh to, well, Burlington.
The U.N. climate report found that rising temperatures in the waters off New England’s coast have sent long-plentiful fish populations like cod further north in search of colder water. Sea levels are rising along our coasts, and increased rain has resulted in more flooding. While those iconic species, industries, and the families and communities that depend on them suffer, Vermont and the rest of New England are facing their own hits to traditional ways of life.
According to the report, ski areas across New England are facing a future marked by less snow, warmer nights and a shorter season — up to 45 percent shorter under a worst-case scenario. How many ski area employees, or ski town economies, can survive in a future with half as many days of work?
ISO was told by the six New England states to consider climate change in its decision-making, and it clearly ignored us. It is time for the states that ISO serves to demand that it add one additional board member from each state — and those board members will be tasked with adding climate change considerations to the ISO mission. If ISO does not want to open its charter to add six new members, each state should begin hearings on changes to that charter to create a more open, more responsive ISO.
This is, after all, an organization that meets in private, takes the position that it is not subject to public meeting laws and does not have to make documents accessible to state authorities or even explain how it reaches decisions regarding the New England power grid. That secrecy needs to end, too.
If ISO will not voluntarily take the concerns of the people it serves into consideration, open its meetings to the public, turn over requested documents and — most importantly — start paying attention to climate change, higher authorities like legislators, judges or the federal government will need to step in. Climate change is happening too fast to be managed by an entity this slow.
