New Jersey AG Submitted Comments Urging FERC to Reject PJM’s Discriminatory Market Rule Proposals

NOVEMBER 6, 2018

New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities submitted joint comments urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reject two proposals by PJM Interconnection that would remove state-supported clean energy from its capacity market and establish a new Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR) for state-supported clean energy. If enacted, PJM’s proposals would counteract state clean energy policies by establishing an artificial price floor designed to benefit fossil-fuel energy sources. In their joint comments, AG Grewal and the Board of Public Utilities called on FERC to rescind its order, noting that the commission’s decision arbitrarily departs from past precedent allowing states to set energy policies based on environmental considerations without subjecting state-supported renewable energy sources to a MOPR. The comments also note that energy tax programs have been artificially reducing the cost of fossil fuel energy sources such as natural gas, oil and coal for more than a century, but the commission was not including these programs as “out-of-market” forces leading to price suppression in the PJM capacity market.