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Guest: Ari Peskoe

Ari Peskoe is Director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. He has written extensively about electricity regulation, on issues ranging from rooftop solar to Constitutional challenges to states’ energy laws.

On Twitter: @AriPeskoe

On the Web: Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School

Ari Peskoe is featured in:

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[Episode #227] – FERC Order 1920

Jun 26 2024

Mini Episode

The United States faces significant challenges in deploying enough transmission capacity and interconnections to support a modernized grid. Approximately 2.5 TW of new clean wind, solar, and storage capacity is currently on hold — twice the country’s current generating capacity of 1.28 TW. These projects are just awaiting transmission interconnections. Building the necessary infrastructure and securing these interconnections would revolutionize the U.S. power grid, likely eliminating all fossil-fuel (and eventually nuclear) generation.

However, investor-owned utilities have historically obstructed the development of new transmission capacity, both within and between their regional transmission grids. In 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sought to address these barriers with Order 1000, but utilities resisted, attempting to undermine and weaken the order. Despite some progress within Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), no new transmission projects outside of these RTOs have been realized under Order 1000. This bottleneck has hindered the energy transition and state-level goals to expand clean energy use and phase out fossil-fueled power under their own renewable portfolio standards.

In response, FERC introduced Order 1920 in May this year, aimed at compelling utilities and regional transmission organizations to undertake long-term regional planning of transmission systems.

In this episode, we are rejoined by Ari Peskoe, Director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School, to walk us through the history of Order 1000 and to explain the implications of the new Order 1920. He’s one of the top scholars in the country on transmission regulation and we’re very pleased that he was willing to share his expertise with us once again.

This 80-minute discussion gets quite technical, but after listening to it you will begin to see a clear picture of a future in which new transmission lines unlock the potential of the wind and solar resources in the US and help us completely decarbonize the power grid.

Guest:

On Twitter: @AriPeskoe

On the Web: Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School

Geek rating: 9

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[Episode #145] – A Slow Take on the Texas Blackout

Apr 14 2021

Mini Episode

In the middle of February 2021, an Arctic cold front wreaked havoc on Texas, causing a blackout that plunged more than 4 million customers into darkness and cold during single-digit temperatures. The crisis led to the deaths of nearly 200 people and an estimated $50 billion changed hands, saddling millions of customers, including ones in neighboring states, with unexpected excess costs.

What happened in Texas is an incredibly complex story involving many factors, from a simple lack of weatherization, to flaws in the state’s electricity market structure, to failed governance. And untangling that story, and identifying ways to prevent such a crisis from ever happening again, is a complex task. To help us with it, we invited several Energy Transition Show alumni—journalist Russell Gold of the Wall Street Journal, professor Emily Grubert of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and legal scholar Ari Peskoe of Harvard Law School—to join us in a four-way conversation that explores all the angles.

Geek rating: 8

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[Episode #43] – Legal Challenges of PURPA and FERC

May 17 2017

Mini Episode

What are the legal issues around new proposed subsidies for nuclear and coal plants? What are the new ways in which the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has to be distinguished from the authority of the states? Are states with economically challenged power generators sliding toward unintentional re-regulation, or will FERC and the courts step in to protect structured markets? And why is PURPA, the federal law that has undergirded renewable procurement since 1978, under fresh attack? In this episode, we explore these deep, dark, yet important and very contemporary legal questions with a Senior Fellow in Electricity Law at the Harvard Law School Environmental Policy Initiative. In addition to our deep dive on PURPA and around-market reforms, we’ll also discuss some of the likely implications of Trump’s new direction in energy policy, implications for the Clean Power Plan, and how the federal government’s leadership role on climate might be changing.

Geek rating: 4

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