BOSTON — ISO-NE on Thursday marked 10 years of its Consumer Liaison Group, whose quarterly meetings serve as a forum for the public to get to know the regional transmission organization, and for the RTO to hear people’s concerns about climate change, their electricity bills and public policy on energy.

As is customary on an anniversary, people took the opportunity to look back, as well as to think about what the future might hold.

The nearly 200 people who attended included state regulators, utility executives, consumer advocates and industry stakeholders — some of whom thought that public policy is outstripping people’s ability to pay, while others said the region is not moving fast enough to meet the challenge of climate change.

Following are highlights of what we heard at the event.

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

“We are running out of time,” said Mary Beth Gentleman, board member of FirstLight Power and clean energy advocate E4TheFuture. “We have done incredibly creative and smart things in New England, but we’re not doing it fast enough. We face an existential threat, and the kind of consensus and meetings and groupthink that have been the strength of New England now seems at odds to me with the pace that we need to move.”

Gentleman said that the biggest surprise for her in the past decade was that Massachusetts licensed a billion-dollar natural gas-fired power plant, Footprint Power’s 674-MW Salem Harbor Station, which came online in May 2018.

Lisa Linowes, executive director of The WindAction Group, a clean energy advocacy organization, said that most consumers have no idea why electricity prices are so high, or how public policy decisions affect their lives.

“Today I would encourage, if not demand, that the Consumer Liaison Group become much more engaged with consumers, and not people who come to push their own agendas at the state house,” Linowes said.

The RTO deserves a lot of credit for the work it’s done over the past decade, but ratepayers in New England are paying the highest electricity rates in the continental U.S., and third in the country only to Hawaii and Alaska, she said.

“There’s something wrong with the system here,” Linowes said. “Much of the onus, in my opinion, is on the shoulders of the states. Does anyone know how much the Massachusetts [renewable portfolio standard] costs? In 2016, which … is the most recent information we have, it was $645 million; that’s the estimate put out by [the Department of Energy Resources].”

Market Economics

“I don’t think markets are broken; it’s just that the world has changed around the markets,” said Matthew Nelson, chair of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. “Regardless of our personal or political positions, the reality in the market is one of increasing demand for clean resources.

“The question is: Can the market rise to meet that challenge? And if it can, what’s the cost?” Nelson said.

He likened today’s market to a three-legged stool, and said, “We’re trying to balance clean with cost and with reliability. Reliability today is king in the electric market, but the relationship between reliability and clean energy is not binary. The narrative that a clean future can only come at the expense of reliability is false.”

While reliability will decline slightly because of adding variable generation to the resource mix, it’s important to better understand what is “on the margins,” and the connection between decarbonization goals, reliability and costs, he said.

“Our metrics for reliability on the electric side are not easily understood, nor is the cost around different levels of reliability easily understood,” Nelson said.

Clean energy does bring sustainability, “but reliability will decline, so we’re left to decide how to deal with that going forward,” Nelson said. “We’re trying to redesign the market on the fly, while not interrupting service, and that’s a cost.”

If costs go up too much, it would affect businesses in the region, which face global competition, he said.

“I think out-of-market contracts are putting a strain on the system a little bit,” Nelson said. “They’ve got new resources coming in at zero price, but the costs are being passed onto consumers, and that’s interrupting the way the market works.

“We want to be able to balance sustainability with a plan,” he continued. “Where is this energy coming in? How much do we need? These are the decisions we need to think about right now. And are the contracts being purchased to respond to a consumer demand, or a policy demand for clean energy?”

Judy Chang of The Brattle Group spoke on trends in the New England power sector, such as declining load, technological advances, reduced costs of solar and wind, low natural gas prices and increasing environmental restrictions.

“What does it mean to have a market of increasing amounts of zero or negative price energy?” Chang said, suggesting setting up a centralized market for clean energy attributes.

Chang mentioned the power of corporations to affect energy policy, as signified by the growth of the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance, whose members include many household names. Companies “do want to contribute to decarbonization,” Chang said. “Their customers and employees will be increasingly demanding such action.”

Brian Forshaw of Energy Market Advisors said he brought a consumer-owned utility perspective to the conference, and that his biggest surprise of the past decade “is that the markets have lasted as long as they have” after being created in the aftermath of the 1965 blackout.

Forshaw said the key takeaway from the day came from Nelson, who said that the world has changed around the region’s electricity markets.

Wind, Sun and Storage

Anne George, vice president for external affairs and corporate communications at ISO-NE, presented an update on the RTO’s activities, noting the grid’s transition to renewable resources, a topic to which the grid operator devoted a conference in May. (See ‘Grid Transformation Day’ Highlights ISO-NE Challenges.)

“It’s a much different grid from 10 years ago,” George said. “The amount of wind in our interconnection queue is the greatest we’ve ever had” — 13,720 MW, or 65% of the queue total of 21,138 MW. “And over the next 10 years, we’re going to see a lot more activity with battery storage,” she added.

Solar is growing too, as attested by Robert Dostis, vice president of stakeholder relations at Green Mountain Power, which serves about 78% of Vermont.

“In 2008 when I joined [GMP], I put solar on our roof and it was a novelty,” Dostis said. “It started picking up in 2012, and in 2013, we had 20 MW in the state. Today, just in [GMP] territory, we have 300 MW of installed solar and 130 MW in the queue. We have so much solar that some substations can’t handle any more.”

CLG Coordinating Committee Chair Rebecca Tepper, chief of the Energy and Telecommunications Division at the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, offered a snapshot of the group’s history.

“I don’t know if people are aware of this, but the Consumer Liaison Group was formed because of a FERC order, No. 719 … which was about enhancing the responsiveness of RTOs and ISOs to customers and other stakeholders,” Tepper said.

Among other requirements, FERC directed each RTO to provide a forum for affected consumers to voice concerns and propose solutions on how to improve the efficient operation of the markets, she said.

Tepper said the CLG will meet next on March 12, 2020, in Vermont.

— Michael Kuser