An ongoing labor dispute at the hotel hosting ISO-NE’s annual open board meeting Nov. 6 drove sparse attendance and harsh criticism from members of consumer and climate advocacy groups.  

Banquet workers at the Seaport Hotel in Boston have called for a boycott of the hotel since July, saying the hotel management has refused to recognize their union and has retaliated against workers. 

Activists associated with the Fix the Grid and No Coal No Gas campaigns — who have often shown up in large numbers to public meetings held by the RTO — opted not to attend, along with many NEPOOL end-user members. In lieu of participation at the meeting, a joint letter signed by 40 nonprofit groups criticized the RTO for a lack of transparency and accessibility to the public. 

The groups urged the board “to support reforms to ISO-NE and its stakeholder process … that will facilitate the transition to a democratic, transparent and renewable electric grid that is reliable and affordable for all,” adding that the “energy transition must bring everyone along through increased access and accountability, without acting at the expense of workers and impacted communities.” 

The letter also called on the board to add representatives of the New England states to the board, commit more resources to the Consumer Liaison Group, increase the RTO’s community engagement staffing, provide consumer groups with more voting power in NEPOOL and add a focus on decarbonization to ISO-NE’s mission statement.  

“We remain concerned that our ISO is not governed as transparently as other ISOs and RTOs across the country,” the groups wrote. “The energy system we all need and deserve requires collaboration, not division, between technical and public interests.” 

The board’s decision to hold its annual public meeting on the day after the national election also caused criticism from some advocates. The only public commenter at the meeting, New Hampshire Consumer Advocate Don Kreis, similarly took the board to task for a lack of transparency.  

“I am very disappointed that the circumstances of today’s meeting … have scared away most of the people who would have come here to talk to the board,” Kreis said. “If you really do want to listen to the community — meaning the people who pay for and depend on the bulk power transmission system in New England — it would be a good idea to get out of these windowless hotel ballrooms and into communities.” 

Kreis also urged the board to support the states in their effort to reign in “unconstrained and unscrutinized” asset condition project spending and called for the establishment of a tariff-funded independent transmission monitor to scrutinize the spending of the region’s transmission owners. 

At the outset of the meeting, board Chair Cheryl LaFleur addressed the “unique circumstances surrounding today’s meeting,” telling attendees it would have been difficult to reschedule after the RTO booked the hotel in the spring.  

“We understand and respect that some stakeholders felt uncomfortable with attending in person,” LaFleur said.  

Regarding the presidential election, LaFleur said it is “safe to say that the change in presidential administration will affect federal energy policy,” but noted that state policy driving changes in the region has proven more stable. 

“The work of the ISO will continue and is as important as ever,” LaFleur said. 

Discussion of Decarbonization Challenges

The board spent much of the meeting discussing the final report from ISO-NE’s recent Economic Planning for the Clean Energy Transition (EPCET) study, which outlines some of the major challenges the region faces in decarbonizing its resource mix. (See ISO-NE Study Lays Out Challenges of Deep Decarbonization and ISO-NE: New Mechanisms May be Needed to Ensure Future Grid Reliability.) 

The report found significant benefits of clean dispatchable resources — such as small modular reactors (SMRs) or generators running on clean fuel — but said major changes to the current market structures will likely be needed to support these resources.

“Each stage in this journey is going to become more and more difficult,” said ISO-NE CEO Gordon van Welie, noting that energy market prices are likely to see a major decline in the future as resources supported by power purchase agreements suppress prices, putting increasing pressure on the capacity market to provide the missing revenue for resources not supported by PPAs. 

“I’m not a great fan of capacity markets,” van Welie said, “but nobody’s come up with a better construct than that.” 

He emphasized that even with technological breakthroughs in technology like SMRs, the current markets are not well suited to support these new technologies.  

Along with the shift in revenue from the energy market to PPAs and the capacity market, the transition will likely put significant cost pressures on ratepayers, van Welie said. 

“I think we’re in for a fairly costly transition,” he added, noting that the buildout of clean energy resources and transmission infrastructure will likely increase prices over the next couple decades before prices eventually begin to recede.  

He emphasized the “untapped potential” of retail demand response — noting that the RTO’s 2050 Transmission Study found demand response could save the region about $8 billion by 2050 — but said it largely falls on the states to unlock the savings. (See ISO-NE Prices Transmission Upgrades Needed by 2050: up to $26B.) 

Van Welie similarly said it is up to the states to take the lead on efforts to increase transparency and accountability on asset condition investments. He stressed the need to develop trust between the states and transmission owners to enable the companies to cost-effectively right-size asset condition projects in anticipation of demand growth.  

“The question that’s on my mind is: How do we get the region, and in particular the states and the transmission owners, to figure out the solution?” van Welie said, adding that ISO-NE cannot take lead this effort because it is a “regulatory function” and the RTO “is not set up to be a regulator.” 

Responding to van Welie’s comments, Kreis argued that a tariff-funded independent transmission monitor would not be “any more regulatory” than ISO-NE’s Internal Market Monitor. 

“You have eyes; you have insights; you have consciences; please use them,” Kreis said.