BOSTON — New England power system emissions decreased by about 3.6% in 2023 compared with 2022, according to the underlying data from ISO-NE COO Vamsi Chadalavada’s monthly report to the NEPOOL Participants Committee.
Natural gas emissions increased by about 3% in 2023, accounting for about 75% of all power system emissions. Oil emissions dropped drastically, ending the year at about 17% of their 2022 levels. Coal emissions also declined, decreasing by about 43%.
Based on data through Jan. 24, Chadalavada said the energy market value for January totaled $712 million, an increase from $552 million in January 2023. He noted that the monthly peak load was 18,431 MW.
Capacity Market Recommendation
The meeting materials indicated ISO-NE has decided to recommend that it transition its Forward Capacity Market to a prompt and seasonal capacity market, which would reduce the time between the auction and the capacity commitment period (CCP), while splitting the annual CCP into seasonal periods.
ISO-NE noted that its Board of Directors “concurred with management’s recommendation to transition to a prompt, seasonal capacity market, which it will discuss next with stakeholders.”
At the NEPOOL Markets Committee on Feb. 7, ISO-NE will propose a two-year delay of Forward Capacity Auction 19 “to allow for time to design a prompt and seasonal market for CCP 19.”
Votes
The PC voted to approve ISO-NE’s proposal to lower the Forward Reserve Market (FRM) offer cap from $9,000/MW-month to $7,100/MW-month and delay the publication of data from the auction. These changes were initiated in response to concerns raised by the ISO-NE Internal Market Monitor about market power in the FRM.
The FRM is designed to procure reserve capacity and is held twice annually. In March of 2025, ISO-NE will replace the FRM with a new day-ahead ancillary services market. (See FERC Approves ISO-NE’s Day-Ahead Ancillary Services Initiative.)
The RTO initially proposed lowering the cap to $6,400/MW-month but adjusted its proposal to $7,100/MW-month following stakeholder feedback and a $7,200/MW-month counterproposal from LS Power that was supported by a vote in the Markets Committee.
The PC also voted to approve changes to its interconnection planning procedures to improve the modeling of inverter-based resources and “update system modeling assumptions to align with the operating conditions expected with the clean energy transition.”
The committee also approved tariff changes to assign responsibility to distributed energy resource aggregators to submit their aggregation’s metering information.
