At a glance
- Jen Hensley, Con Edison's senior vice president of corporate affairs, said the framework could help keep New York on track to meet its clean energy goals.
- For infrastructure investors, the change would be a shift in counterparty on up to 1 GW a year of land-based projects, with a regulated utility holding assets that a private developer would otherwise build and own.
- The proposal would mark a significant shift for New York's restructured electricity market, where electric service companies such as Con Edison's utilities generally do not own bulk generation and transmission.
Con Edison and its in-state peers have proposed a framework that would let New York utilities collectively develop and own up to 1 GW of land-based renewable energy projects a year, Utility Dive reports.
Jen Hensley, Con Edison's senior vice president of corporate affairs, said the framework could help keep New York on track to meet its clean energy goals. “We believe this would provide a long-term cost-effective strategy for supplying clean energy to customers,” she said in an October presentation for investors.
For infrastructure investors, the change would be a shift in counterparty on up to 1 GW a year of land-based projects, with a regulated utility holding assets that a private developer would otherwise build and own. Utility Dive reports that calls to ease restrictions on utility ownership of generation have grown in restructured U.S. markets with high power prices and development costs, despite pushback from independent power producers.
The proposal would mark a significant shift for New York's restructured electricity market, where electric service companies such as Con Edison's utilities generally do not own bulk generation and transmission.
State law requires the state's electric sector to reach 70% renewable energy by 2030 and full decarbonization by 2040, though Hensley said amendments passed earlier this year watered down some aspects of the law to “reflect the importance of feasibility, cost effectiveness and consumer affordability.”
Separately, Con Edison has asked regulators to approve a Reliability Asset Dispatch Rights program aimed at distribution-level storage systems and to extend a key deadline for adding transmission-connected bulk storage systems.
New Hampshire this year passed a law allowing utilities to own individual gas and nuclear generators under 5 MW of capacity, and a separate bill that would have allowed utilities to own nuclear reactors under 300 MW did not become law. The New York utilities' proposal is more expansive than either.
The next marker is a white paper on the topic that Hensley said she anticipates from the New York State Public Service Commission later this year.
Reported by the Energy Transition desk from Utility Dive. Published . Corrections