By Suzanne Herel
The Supreme Court’s stay of the Clean Power Plan won’t affect PJM’s planned analysis of the economic and reliability implications of complying with the federal program.
“Our main concern is reliability. We don’t have a position on the Clean Power Plan as far as merits, but we recognize it is a transformational change that we need to be prepared for,” PJM’s Muhsin Abdurrahman told the Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee on Thursday. (See Supreme Court Blocks Clean Power Plan.)
Earlier in the week, PJM released the methodology it will use to study the CPP for a report to be published by May 31. That target date still stands.
PJM said the report will “identify potential economic, operational, resource adequacy and transmission usage implications” of the CPP, emphasizing that the review will not be used to decide on specific transmission upgrades.
States had faced a Sept. 6 deadline to file a compliance plan or request an extension. Now that they have more time, Abdurrahman said, they are asking for even more sensitivity studies.
“They want to know, is my state a net buyer or seller of allowances? Do I have to incentivize more wind and solar, or do I have an option to purchase it externally, and what would it cost?” he said.
PJM’s first review will address the long-term impacts of the plan and be confined to the PJM footprint. Future analyses coordinated with other balancing authorities will address energy market interchange and broader emissions trading in the medium term and short term, the RTO said.
The EPA rule includes performance standards for generators. Together, PJM said, the standards would “shift the way energy is produced and delivered within the PJM system and influence future investments in generation sources.”
In PJM, the rule would reduce carbon emissions by 36% from 2005 levels by the year 2030.
The key variable in compliance will be the choice of a rate- or mass-based approach, along with the level of credit trading in which generators will be permitted to engage. Rate-based compliance limits emissions in tons per megawatt-hour; the mass-based method caps emissions in tons per year.
A similar study recently released by MISO concluded that mass-based compliance would cost a third less than the rate-based design. (See MISO: Mass-Based CPP Plan 1/3 Cost of Rate-Based.)
PJM published a study a year ago based on EPA’s proposed rule that concluded that a regional approach to compliance could be 30% less costly than a state-by-state path. (See PJM: EE, Renewables Could Save Some Coal Plants under Carbon Rule.)
“Each of the compliance pathways is likely to yield different economic and reliability results for the PJM region over the interim (2022-2029) and final (2030 and beyond) compliance periods,” PJM said in announcing its methodology. “PJM’s modeling approach is designed to provide states with answers on how compliance with the CPP will drive market outcomes and the need for additional investment in the electric system.”
Natural gas prices and state renewable portfolio standards “have the potential to affect power sector-wide economic outcomes and incremental CPP compliance cost perhaps more than any other driver,” according to PJM. “Consequently, PJM will study each of the compliance pathways and the reference case with and without the renewable portfolio standards and for a high and low natural gas price forecast.”
Analysts will employ the reliability pricing model base case — used to develop the parameters for PJM’s capacity auctions — for their initial transmission and generation assumptions.
Initial assumptions regarding renewable resources available in 2019/20 will be based on an evaluation of the historic commercial probability of resources that enter the generation queue and the incentives from the extension of the federal production and investment tax credits, PJM said.