WASHINGTON, D.C., September 29 — National business group Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) released the following statement in response to FERC’s split vote on PJM Interconnection’s proposed changes to the Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR):

“Today’s notice from FERC that PJM’s proposal to establish a more narrowly focused MOPR was approved by operation of law is good news for consumers and advanced energy businesses,” said Jeff Dennis, AEE’s managing director and general counsel. “By targeting capacity resources built pursuant to legitimate state policies for mitigation, the expanded MOPR imposed on PJM by FERC in 2019 threatened to increase costs for consumers, unjustifiably exclude advanced energy technologies from the PJM capacity market, and interfere with the achievement of state and customer clean energy goals. The narrowly-tailored MOPR that will now be in effect returns this market rule to its original purpose of addressing the narrow circumstances where it has been shown that capacity buyers have the actual incentive and ability to manipulate market prices. 

“It is unfortunate, though, that a majority of the Commissioners did not agree to issue a formal order affirmatively finding that the narrowly focused MOPR is just and reasonable,” Dennis added. “The narrowly-tailored MOPR that PJM filed corrects rampant legal and economic flaws in the pre-existing expanded MOPR, and reaffirms the importance of respecting and accommodating legitimate state energy policy objectives in the wholesale market. It is disappointing that a majority of the Commissioners could not agree on these important principles of federal and state comity and send a strong signal that it is not the place of federal regulators or wholesale market rules to ‘mitigate’ state clean energy policies.” 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• AEE blog, MOPR Rollback Proposal Heads to FERC (July, 2021)