Commissioner Richard Glick Statement
December 17, 2020
Docket No. EL21-19-000
The importance of ensuring the reliability of the bulk power system is indisputable and goes to the very core of the Commission’s responsibilities under the Federal Power Act. The impacts associated with climate change are stressing the grid even further. One need look no further than the series of unprecedented wildfires that have burned across the western United States or events such as the August heat storm covered in the presentation at today’s meeting. During a single seven day-period this past August, California experienced 4 of the 5 hottest days recorded in the last 35 years, with temperatures reaching 130 degrees F in Death Valley, California, which may have been the single highest temperature ever recorded in the United States. Simply put, ensuring reliability in the face of climate change is going to require more and more of this Commission’s time and resources.
But taking the course of action the Chairman proposed at today’s open meeting would have been a profound mistake. Rushing headlong into a section 206 proceeding without many of the facts to even conclude what went wrong would have done far more harm than good to the goal of ensuring that sufficient resources are available to meet electric reliability in the West. Given the West’s experiences with this Commission during the 2000-2001 energy crisis and some of the resentment that still exists, it is particularly important that, rather than dictating solutions from Washington, D.C., the region be given the space to develop proposed actions organically with the involvement of the region’s diverse stakeholders. CAISO and its California state counterparts have already begun investigating the root causes of the rolling blackouts experienced in August and are working to identify solutions to prevent their reoccurrence. We should give those efforts a chance. Indeed, I believe strongly that imposing a heavy federal hand at this moment would ultimately hamper the development of the type of regional solutions needed to enhance resource adequacy in the West. I am glad that the Commission elected not to take the action proposed by the draft order in E-3 on today’s agenda.
I do not mean to suggest that the Commission has no role to play in addressing these issues. The challenge of ensuring resource adequacy will require cooperation throughout the West and I believe the Commission should use its convening authority to explore regional solutions that avoid falling back on a balkanized, state-by-state approach. To that end, I would support holding a technical conference to examine resource adequacy challenges facing the West as well as potential solutions. A course of action along those lines would allow us to work productively with our counterparts in the West in the hopes of achieving durable solutions to the increasing reliability challenges, including resource adequacy, posed by climate change.