Panelists during last week’s fourth annual gridCONNEXT conference expressed tepid hope that the incoming Biden administration will be able to advance some of the policies they say are needed to integrate the surge of renewables coming online and address climate change.

Tepid because, as many noted, regardless of the results of the Jan. 5 special elections in Georgia that will decide which party controls the Senate, Congress will remain bitterly divided for at least the next two years. Many speakers listed off the issues that the two parties can come to some agreement on, such as energy efficiency, research and development funding, and enhancing grid cybersecurity.

But as they did so, there were notable hints of doubt, or even fatigue, in their voices.

“Can we reconfigure the grid in a way that allows us to take advantage of these [renewable] resources … and take advantage of this changing energy landscape?” posited Tracy Warren, director of the American Council on Renewable Energy’s Macro Grid Initiative, which seeks to expand transmission nationwide, on Dec. 8, the first day of the online conference. (See ‘Macro Grid’ Seeks to Connect Grid’s Regions.)

“I think it is a serious question [of] ‘can we do this?’” she continued. “As many of you know, we’ve been talking about infrastructure for a long time. ‘Infrastructure Week in Washington’ is a punchline to unfunny jokes. Look at what’s happening now: Congress is having difficulty passing a COVID relief bill in the middle of a pandemic.”

The need for more transmission pervaded nearly every discussion during the conference, regardless of whether it was a panel topic. But past failures of ambitious, interstate transmission providers, such as Clean Line Energy Partners, also frequently came up.

“I was looking over some notes from a transmission conference I spoke at about 12 years ago, and unfortunately the three points haven’t changed,” Jonathan Weisgall, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs at Berkshire Hathaway Energy, said Wednesday. “I once joked [that] we better hire eighth-graders for our transmission department so they can actually see projects finished before they retire.”

“We need some direction; we need some leadership at the federal level,” said Jay Caspary, vice president at Grid Strategies. “I don’t think the existing planning processes, at least at the regional level, are looking out far enough and reflecting what we expect to happen [in] 20, 30, 40 years. They’re more short-term and looking at the reliability problems in the next few years.”

But even that approach, Caspary noted, failed this year during a record heat wave in the Western U.S. that led to rolling blackouts in California. One of the main problems that led to them was the state’s lack of import capability. “There was 12,000 MW of wind in the [Great Plains] that couldn’t get there,” Caspary said. “We need to think differently.”

Weisgall, Caspary and others called for FERC to revisit Order 1000 after President-elect Joe Biden takes office and names a new chairman. They also expressed hope that it would continue to direct the integration of new technologies into RTO markets, similar to Orders 841 and 2222.

“We’ve got to improve the business case for more transmission investment,” Weisgall said. “We’ve got to do that at FERC, in Congress and in the states.” He also called for Congress to designate an agency — either FERC or the Department of Energy — as a single point of contact for transmission planning.

Weisgall noted that Berkshire’s Iowa-based MidAmerican Energy joined MISO, and NV Energy and PacifiCorp the Western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM), without any legislative or regulatory mandates. But despite the EIM’s success, and the expected benefits of its upcoming extended day-ahead market, a full-fledged RTO would provide even more, such as more efficient dispatch of renewables, he said. “Nobody disagrees with that. Nobody disagrees with the goal of trying to minimize the number of seams and maximizing markets. We really do need a full regional market to do that.”

The main problem? “Cali-phobia.”

Weisgall shared the panel with CAISO Board of Governors Chair Angelina Galiteva and NYISO CEO Richard Dewey. He noted that while both represented the U.S.’ two ISOs, NYISO is unlike CAISO in that the latter was formed by California law with a board appointed by the state’s governor. “You’re not going to get to a West-wide RTO if the California governor appoints that board,” requiring a change to state law or even the Federal Power Act, he said. “It’s going to be incredibly difficult” given the political diversity in the West and dysfunction in Washington.

‘Dysfunctional and Unfixable’

Government dysfunction was the main topic of a keynote address on the last day of the conference by John Hofmeister, CEO of Citizens for Affordable Energy and former president of Shell Oil. He took the pessimism about Congress at the conference to the next level.

“The governance of energy [in the U.S.] is broken and dysfunctional and unfixable in its current form,” Hofmeister said. “Twenty years into the 21st century, and we are still stumbling along as a society” in addressing climate change. “Nine presidents, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump, have failed to fix this problem.”

Hofmeister’s message was less about the urgency of the problem than its magnitude and the inherent inability of the U.S. government to solve it. Two-year election cycles lead Congress to focus only on short-term problems, while the multitude of federal agencies and congressional committees responsible for energy policy each have their own priorities, making it impossible for the government to be “on the same page” about global problems, he argued.

The one system “that sustains us through thick and thin, regardless of election cycle,” has been the Federal Reserve, whose Board of Governors comprises seven members nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for staggered 14-year terms. He called for a similar body dedicated to setting policy on climate change, but he acknowledged it was unlikely.

“From my standpoint, I’m less optimistic than I was 10 years ago … that we can [solve climate change] rationally and pragmatically.”