This commentary is written by Chase Whiting, staff attorney for Conservation Law Foundation Vermont.
Fall is coming, and with it we can expect another season of fearmongering from the operators of New England’s electric power grid (ISO). ISO’s winter outlook is likely to include its annual threat of rolling blackouts and other justifications for importing more fossil fuels into the region rather than relying on clean energy sources to keep New England’s lights on.
In fact, ISO-New England has already begun its fossil fuel drumbeat before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s forum in Burlington this month, where the reliability of the region’s electricity system will be in sharp focus.
ISO-New England has re-told this tired story each year since at least 2005 — and yet, contrary to its predictions, the region has never experienced rolling blackouts due to a lack of fossil fuels or otherwise.
Here’s what we are seeing: hotter and drier summers, dwindling fish stocks, boney ski slopes and more severe weather. All of these are caused by climate change — by fossil fuels. When ISO-New England should be heeding the six states it serves and getting more solar, wind and energy storage onto the power grid, it is instead urging us to buy more polluting fossil fuels. We deserve better. Our children and grandchildren deserve better.
ISO-New England issued a lengthy statement in advance of the Sept. 8 Burlington meeting. In the statement, ISO once again marches through its litany of justifications for its failure to do its part to alleviate the stranglehold that fossil fuels have on New England’s electricity supply or to help our region’s states meet their mandatory clean energy and climate targets.
Instead, ISO-New England argues that the grid needs a so-called fossil fuel “energy reserve” to cover relatively low probability risks, like the possibility of multiple pieces of the grid’s infrastructure going offline at the same time. ISO-New England is implying, yet again, that the states should invest in fossil fuels — a direct contradiction of the states’ climate laws.
While it is lobbying for more fossil fuels, ISO-New England is simultaneously stymying efforts to get more renewable energy built. Back in May, ISO-New England postponed by two years a rule change that would allow renewables like wind and solar to compete fairly with fossil fuels in the energy market. If our reliance on fossil fuels is putting the system and electricity reliability at risk, as ISO claims, why is ISO delaying our access to clean energy alternatives? In the fight to keep climate change in check, we don’t have the luxury of waiting around for another two years. We need ISO-New England to take action now.
And there’s an irony to all of this. While New England has not had rolling blackouts despite ISO-New England’s annual warnings, we certainly could in the future. But they likely won’t be because our fossil fuel energy supplies are running low. It will be a result of climate change.
Climate change is causing severe, dramatic weather events — extreme heat and storms, flooding and drought. Those events, not a lack of fossil fuel supply, are the cause of downed power lines, flooded power stations, more power demand and electrical outages that actually do leave New Englanders in the dark.
When the utilities and ISO-New England representatives gather with federal regulators in Burlington, they need to be sent a message: Listen to the people you work for. We want to live in a safe and healthy climate.
New England states have put ISO-New England on notice. It has been more than a year since ISO-New England received a request by all six states that ISO immediately start considering climate ramifications in the decisions it makes managing the electric grid. The states have made it clear that solar and wind need to be given priority when ISO-New England determines our energy generation future — yet the ISO has continued with its lobbying effort on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.
Clean electricity is quite possibly the single most important tool we have in the fight to cut climate pollution. We need to replace fossil fuels with electricity for cars and trucks, for homes and businesses, for public transportation. And that electricity must come from clean power sources.
In survey after survey, most Vermonters express strong concerns about climate change. And yet, funded with money from our electric bills, ISO-New England tends to operate behind closed doors and against Vermont’s goal to stop climate-damaging pollution.
When the CEO of ISO, Gordon van Welie, speaks at the FERC conference in Burlington on Thursday about the fragility of the power grid and the importance of creating a fossil fuel “energy reserve,” let’s remember that this is the same tune he’s been singing since he started the job years ago. New England doesn’t need another year of fearmongering about rolling blackouts and low fossil fuel supplies. We need ISO-New England to deliver climate solutions.
Vermont has spoken. The other New England states have spoken. ISO hasn’t listened. We hope when ISO comes to Burlington on Sept. 8, they’ll finally listen to New Englanders and step up on climate change.
