RTO Insider: ACORE Panelists Call for ‘New Era’ in Energy Policy

https://www.rtoinsider.com/105430-acore-call-for-new-era-energy-policy-reliability

Chatterjee — now chief government affairs officer at climate technology developer Palmetto — was joined on the May 15 panel by Karen Onaran, CEO of the Electricity Consumers Resource Council; Devin Hartman, a senior fellow at R Street; and NERC Senior Engineer Stephen Coterillo, who shared details on the ERO’s recently released 2025 Summer Reliability Assessment. (See NERC Warns Summer Shortfalls Possible in Multiple Regions.)

Onaran agreed with Chatterjee on “the need to depoliticize energy.” She referred to the SRA as the latest in a long line of reliability assessments that showed “we’re on the razor’s edge” with regard to managing increasingly impactful extreme weather events.

While there are long-term solutions that Onaran said regulators should pursue to address these issues, such as streamlining the approval process for transmission projects and interconnection requests, she also urged utilities to look at more immediate steps.

“If everything goes great and we all have sunny, 70-degree days all summer, we’re golden. But we know that that’s not going to happen, and that doesn’t happen in all regions,” Onaran said. “So, what can we do in the short term to make sure that we’re meeting … these edge experiences where we’re seeing either higher demand, or the weather’s not cooperating?”

Drawing on her experience working with large industrial consumers, Onaran suggested one positive short-term change would be to improve load forecasts so customers can know more confidently how much demand to expect. This would prevent underbuilding, leading to energy shortfalls or requiring imports, and overbuilding, which could cause unnecessary expenses to ratepayers.

Responding to Onaran, Hartman acknowledged the urgency of the near future but emphasized that utilities and regulators must not take their minds off the long term.