Well, we’ve made it to the end of 2024. As we take a breath to gather ourselves for the coming year, it’s good to reflect on all we’ve accomplished in the past year and chart a course for all that remains to be done. CUB, through its Consumers for a Better Grid campaign, has been working diligently on behalf of Illinois consumers at the power-grid operator PJM Interconnection and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). A few highlights from the past year …
January: We started the year by organizing consumer advocates across the two Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) that manage the power grids in Illinois, MISO and PJM, to call for better interregional transmission planning. We have a special interest in ensuring that planning between the two regions is done efficiently, because proactively planning interregional transmission can lower costs and improve reliability in Illinois (especially in the face of extreme weather).
Learn more about transmission: Who pays for transmission lines? Take a look at your power bill
February: State legislators in Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia announced a shared effort to bring better transparency to PJM. CUB’s Clara Summers testified in front of the Maryland state legislature in support of the bill.
Clara at the National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program in April.
March: The Chicago Tribune shined a light on PJM’s broken interconnection queue process. “(PJM) has unnecessarily set our transition to cleaner energy back by years,” said Clara Summers, the Consumers for a Better Grid campaign manager at CUB.
April: CUB’s Clara Summers was invited to speak on a panel at the National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program. The decisions made at RTOs impact the affordability, reliability, and cleanliness of our electricity. Environmental justice communities feel these issues most acutely, as they often deal with energy burden, frequent power outages and power plant pollution. But getting access to RTOs is very difficult for the public. Consumers for a Better Grid is working to change that.
May: CUB Executive Director Sarah Moskowitz and Campaign Manager Clara Summers attended PJM’s Annual Meeting in Baltimore. At the meeting, Clara presented to the PJM Board about needed improvements to the decision-making process. We also joined other consumer advocates in filing formal comments to FERC, agreeing with proposed rules barring generators from forcing consumers to pay for reliability standards the generators are required to meet.
June: CUB joined environmental organizations in filing a protest with FERC, asking that the federal agency require PJM to comply with Order 2023 by streamlining the interconnection process and modernizing the grid. “PJM is dragging its feet on the clean energy transition and doing everything it can, instead, to create exceptions for itself,” we told the Chicago Tribune.
July: This was a banner month for us. In the space of a few weeks, we joined a protest filed with FERC advocating for fair treatment of energy efficiency in the market. We also filed a protest opposing anti-consumer changes to PJM’s Consolidated Transmission Owners Agreement, with legal support from Earthjustice. Finally, a proposal that we co-sponsored with Maryland advocates passed a PJM stakeholder vote with resounding support. (The vote begins a discussion on how to design and evaluate cost-effective alternatives to running expensive, polluting power plants past their desired close date. There’s a lot more work to do, but this is a step in the right direction!)
August: PJM announced that prices in its little-known “capacity auction” had skyrocketed–and that means ComEd power prices will go up significantly on June 1, 2025. (ComEd has estimated it will increase bills by an average of $10.50 a month. It could have been even worse, but the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act will provide some protection from the price spike.) The grim news sent us into overdrive, as CUB launched a public information campaign, explaining to Illinois consumers what this all meant and calling out PJM’s poor planning and flawed market rules.
Learn more about the capacity market:
Q&A: ‘Capacity’ price spike means ComEd supply price will shoot up in June 2025
Consumer Advocate letter to PJM Board
PJM broke the capacity auction — but here’s how they can fix it
Clara was in Washington, DC, in September to meet with FERC commissioners as part of the Consumer Advocates of the PJM States.
September: CUB joined consumer advocates from across PJM to gather in Washington, DC, for meetings with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. FERC is the only body with oversight over RTOs like PJM (covering northern Illinois) and MISO (covering the central and southern parts of the state), so it’s critical for them to hear from ratepayer advocates.
October: Each fall, state regulators from across the PJM region gather for a meeting of the Organization of the PJM States. CUB’s Clara Summers spoke on a panel about the recent capacity auction: “The overall question of this panel is whether the 2025-2026 [auction] sent the right price signal,” she said. “The short and disturbing answer is no.” We backed up our comments on the panel by supporting a FERC complaint led by environmental organizations about Reliability Must Run (RMR) resources.
Sarah speaks up for consumer interests at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
November: At the beginning of the month, CUB Executive Director Sarah Moskowitz was in the nation’s Capital, speaking on a FERC panel about the need for consumer protections in a changing energy landscape. “The decisions we make impact vulnerable ratepayers who are already suffering,” said Sarah, the only consumer advocate on the panel.” Just before Thanksgiving, CUB joined other consumer advocates in a broad complaint to FERC about capacity market rules.
December: After a long year of ups and downs, and a lot of hard work advocating for consumers, we received some good news: FERC issued a full rejection of the anti-consumer changes PJM had pushed for in an agreement with transmission owners–called the Consolidated Transmission Owners Agreement, or CTOA. Why is this a big deal? Clara had written about this over the summer: “Transmission owners are the wealthy and powerful energy companies–like Exelon, the parent of utility ComEd–that own the big, high voltage lines that crisscross the nation. If FERC approves the CTOA, transmission owners will get to override more efficient regional projects, and instead build many smaller “supplemental” projects that are more lucrative for transmission companies and expensive to consumers. The deal also includes extra giveaways to the transmission owners to shield them and PJM from scrutiny and make it extra hard to challenge them.”
But, in part thanks to our advocacy, FERC rejected the CTOA. This isn’t the end of this fight, for sure, but it’s a big win. (Read CUB’s statement on this consumer victory.)
… And that’s just a slice of what we’ve been up to! It is our privilege to advocate for Illinois consumers at PJM and FERC. May 2025 bring more opportunities for clean, affordable energy.
