S3E1: R Street's Josiah Neeley talks about the debate in Texas on the future of the ERCOT power market

Josiah Neeley, the Austin-based research fellow and Texas director with the libertarian-leaning R Street Institute, discusses a recent letter that the think tank and some 30 other interest groups sent to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm urging that DOE, when it is allocating funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill, to take into account areas of the country that have not yet adopted a regional transmission organization and organized competitive wholesale power market. He also discusses the debate in Texas about whether some kind of capacity construct should be adopted for ERCOT's energy-only power market. The PUC is expected to address the matter soon. State lawmakers' concerns about the regulatory commission potentially altering the energy-only market structure could become fraught as the biennial Legislature convenes soon. And on top of that, the PUC is up for Sunshine Act review under state law. "There's definitely going to be a lot of sparks flying related to that and I'm not enough of a prognosticator to tell you exactly what's going to happen. Will the energy-only market still exist at the end of that process? Will the market still exist? Who knows? But it's certainly something that there's been a lot of pressure, pro and con, of all these different options," Neeley said.

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