In Rethinking Grid Governance for the Climate Change Era, Prof. Shelley Welton makes a compelling case for why “U.S. grid governance must be redesigned to accommodate a new era of regulatory priorities that include responding to climate change.” As the operators of regional electricity markets and managers of the transmission grid, Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) “must play a pivotal role” in achieving clean electricity goals. However, as Professor Welton details, RTO governance structures are in many ways designed to resist the types of changes necessary to enable a transition to a clean electric grid. Professor Welton offers four pathways to better grid governance, including increasing public oversight and control by enhancing state and federal oversight capabilities. This Comment focuses on the role of states, and, in particular, the role that state consumer advocates can play in increasing RTO accountability, promoting cost-effective market and grid improvements, and advancing clean energy goals.

This Comment is based on Tom Hassenboehler’s remarks at the 2021-2022 Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review conference, available at https://www.eli.org/ environmental-law-policy-annual-review/2021-2022-ELPAR-conference.

One central but under-scrutinized way that fossil fuel companies impede the clean energy transition is by essentially running the United States’ electricity grid, writing its rules to favor their own private interests. In most of the country, the electricity grid is managed by Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs). RTOs are private membership clubs in which incumbent industry members make the rules for electricity markets and the electricity grid through private mini-democracies—with voting privileges reserved for RTO members—under broad regulatory authority. RTOs are able to adopt positions against new clean energy technologies because their hybrid, quasi-governmental institutional structures allow incumbent industry members to dominate stakeholder processes. This Article contends that United States grid governance must be redesigned to accommodate a new era of regulatory priorities that include responding to climate change.