The Energy Markets Podcast
Conversations with energy and environmental policy experts exploring the best state and federal policies to effectuate the urgently needed transition to a clean-energy economy at least cost to consumers. Lot's of wonky FERC stuff. State-level utility regulation and politics. Economists. Lawyers. Engineers. Politicians. Government regulators. Advocates. And acronyms. Lots of acronyms. Topical discussions about energy market developments with a focus on regulatory policies that disincentivize the innovation necessary to advance environmental and climate change objectives at least cost to consumers and the economy. Hosted by Bryan Lee, an energy and environmental policy consultant with decades of Washington, D.C.-based experience as a journalist, government official and energy company executive. Lee and invited guests discuss the latest developments at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other federal agencies, Capitol Hill, as well as happenings at state-level regulatory commissions and legislatures.
Episodes
64 episodes
S4E7: R Street Institute economist Michael Giberson speaks to price trends in electricity markets
In this episode we continue our consideration of what Bill Massey in our first episode this season called "the battle of the statistics" between monopoly and competition advocates. We talk with Michael Giberson, an economist and senior fellow f...
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41:50
S4E6: RESA's Rich Spilky speaks to the 'battle of the statistics' regarding the consumer benefits of retail energy competition
Since the dawn of retail energy competition a quarter century ago, various factions pro and con have engaged in a "battle of the statistics" (as former FERC Commissioner Bill Massey termed it in Episode 1 of this season) regarding the benefits ...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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52:13
S4E5: The Center for LNG's Charlie Riedl on the Biden administration's 'pause' on export permits for liquefied natural gas
The Biden administration in January announced a pause in reviewing export permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in order to better understand the impacts that the United States' world-leading LNG exports will have on domestic natural gas pric...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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53:27
S4E4: Former Montana utility regulator Travis Kavulla discusses the headwinds and the opportunities for competitive retail suppliers to bring value to energy consumers
The debate over the benefits of competition for energy consumers has persisted since the advent of retail competition for electricity and natural gas more than two decades ago. Consumers are stuck in a limbo between traditional monopoly regulat...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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57:13
S4E3: NRDC's David Doniger on the ubiquity of emissions cap-and-trade programs, an alternative to command-and-control regulation, which seemingly has fallen out of favor when it comes to managing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions
Our discussion continues with David Doniger, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney, who notes that flexible market-based emissions cap-and-trade programs have been applied somewhat ubiquitously to address a range of environmental is...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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38:12
S4E2: NRDC's David Doniger discusses the Chevron doctrine case pending before the Supreme Court, and addresses past and present efforts to regulate carbon emissions
Who better to discuss the ramifications of the Supreme Court's apparent path toward striking down the long-standing legal precedent known as the Chevron doctrine than the lawyer who argued the original case 40 years ago?Natural Resource...
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46:19
S4E1: Former FERC regulator Bill Massey discusses the courts' expansive view of the Commission's statutory authority and pending cases before SCOTUS that may test whether that expansive view will 'have its wings clipped'
Energy lawyer and law school professor William Massey, at 10 years the longest-serving commissioner ever at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, discusses the vast body of legal precedent finding FERC has expansive authority under the Fede...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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1:00:21
S3E24: 'Food is energy.' So what is the energy-intensive fertilizer industry doing to decarbonize while still keeping the world fed?
The world's burgeoning billions have been kept fed thanks to the "Green Revolution" of the 20th century, which featured new hybridized crops with enhanced yields. Often deemed a miracle of science, it was also made possible by energy-intensive ...
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Season 3
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Episode 24
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1:05:19
S3E23: Commodities trading expert Matthew Hunter talks about the financial markets for managing – or hedging – energy price risk, and how they and consumers are impacted by extreme events such as California in 2000 and Texas in 2021
Matthew Hunter was a power trader in the Western market in 2000, when California's poorly designed and managed electricity market imploded costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. After that, he spent much of his career at the Federal...
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Season 3
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Episode 23
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56:48
S3E22: State Senator Tom Davis discusses his pro-competitive legislative agenda for South Carolina electricity consumers
State Senator Tom Davis of South Carolina is a rare breed in politics today. At a time when no other state is actively considering competitive reforms to their traditionally monopoly-regulated utility sectors, and many politicians in states alr...
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Season 3
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Episode 22
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46:19
S3E21: WPTF's Scott Miller talks about market-based grid regionalization efforts in the West, and the ghosts of the 2000-2001 regional energy crisis that haunt those efforts
More than two decades ago when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sought to put large regional wholesale power markets in place nationally, Western states were a hotbed of opposition to the since-abandoned goal. But today there are ...
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Season 3
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Episode 21
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35:44
S3E20: Octopus Energy's Michael Lee speaks to his company's consumer-centric vision of 'Retail 2.0' for energy supply
UK-based Octopus Energy has seen extraordinary growth since launched in 2015 by fund-management firm Octopus Group. It's heavily invested in renewable energy in the UK and elsewhere, and it has retail energy supply operations in Australia, Germ...
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Season 3
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Episode 20
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55:51
S3E19: The Energy Democracy Initiative's John Farrell speaks to how, in his view, electric utility monopolies 'fuel climate disasters and public corruption'
Electric utility monopolies have captured headlines in recent years by sparking catastrophic wildfires and fomenting public corruption scandals in several states. "There are probably other things like this going on we just haven't found out abo...
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Season 3
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Episode 19
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34:21
S3E18: Special Initiative on Offshore Wind’s Kris Ohleth speaks to the strong headwinds facing offshore wind
The flood of financial headlines on the offshore wind industry have been quite bearish in recent months. The industry has been buffetted by strong post-COVID headwinds – dramatic inflationary pressures and supply chain problems – that have rend...
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Season 3
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Episode 18
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23:08
S3E17: EPSA's Todd Snitchler discusses EPA's new power plant rules in the context of ongoing reliability concerns stemming from the transition to a clean-energy power grid
The Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rules to significantly crack down on carbon emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, as published, promises to aggravate growing power grid reliability concerns, EPSA president and CEO To...
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Season 3
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Episode 17
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43:59
S3E16: FERC Commissioner Mark Christie calls for reevaluation of competitive wholesale power markets after 25 years
Commissioner Mark Christie of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been a prominent advocate of the need to overhaul the competitive market design at the heart of the regional wholesale power markets that have evolved in the U.S. over t...
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Season 3
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Episode 16
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1:01:21
S3E15: Former Massachusetts regulator Paul Hibbard of the Analysis Group talks about his study of retail electricity competition that aims to inform the policy debate over ending retail choice for residential customers
Massachusetts is actively considering Gov. Maura Healey's longstanding demand to end competitive retail energy sales to residential customers. As part of this debate in Massachusetts and elsewhere, the Retail Energy Advancement League commissio...
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Season 3
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Episode 15
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1:05:40
S3E14: The Nuclear Energy Institute's Matt Crozat discusses new nuclear and SMRs as part of nuclear power's role in the clean-energy transition
There's something like a couple dozen proposals now for development of small modular reactors (SMRs), widely seen as the future of nuclear power as a participant in the clean-energy transition. Publicly traded NuScale* is at the vanguard of thi...
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Season 3
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Episode 14
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45:10
S3E13: Brattle Group consultants discuss their report for the South Carolina legislature on the benefits of adopting an organized regional wholesale power market in the Southeast
Burned by an aborted nuclear power plant new build that saddled the state's consumers with hundreds of millions of dollars in needless costs for years to come, South Carolina's Act 187 established a legislative study committee to ponder whether...
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Season 3
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Episode 13
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46:52
S3E12: Rob Gramlich, Frank Lacey and Doug Kantor discuss the obstacles posed by utility monopoly regulation for private-sector EV charging infrastructure development
Grid Strategy's Rob Gramlich and Electric Advisors Consulting's Frank Lacey detail the findings of a policy analysis paper they co-authored, Serving Customers Be...
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Season 3
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Episode 12
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1:03:59
S3E11: R Street Institute's Josiah Neeley unpacks how the recently adjourned legislative session in Austin will impact Texas electricity consumers
Texas lawmakers just concluded their 88th biennial legislative session in Austin, and energy issues were very much at the fore as a range of proposals that would have incentivized investment in gas-fired generation and disincentivized renewable...
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Season 3
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Episode 11
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29:41
EMP S3E10: ITC's Nathan Benedict defends monopoly transmission development and the incumbent's right of first refusal
We reached out to ITC Holdings Corp. for the transmission owner's view on monopoly transmission development and the incumbent transmission owner's right of first refusal, known by the acronym ROFR, to build new interregional transmission grid p...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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22:03
EMP S3E9: Willett Kempton, a pioneer in vehicle-to-grid technology, talks about the state of play for V2G, which promises to become a critically important resource for power grid operators
Back in the 1990s, the University of Delaware's Willett Kempton conducted early vehicle-to-grid (V2G) experiments with PJM, operator of the MidAtlantic region's wholesale power market, testing the feasibility of using electric vehicles to provi...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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51:40
EMP S3E8: Former FERC Commissioner Rich Glick discusses transmission and ROFR, state-federal jurisdiction and reform of the 1935 Federal Power Act, and the need to reform regional electricity markets to reflect changing resources and climate.
Rich Glick, in his first wide-ranging interview since denied a second term at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, discusses the need for building out the transmission grid and for reforms to wholesa...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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46:17
S3E7: William Hogan of Harvard's Kennedy School defends the LMP-based market used in regional wholesale power markets as the best and only way to facilitate the transition to a clean-energy grid
William Hogan, the Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, along with his colleague Scott Harvey, are the architects of the market structure employed in every competitive regional whol...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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51:48