Background

Electricity regulators are contending with two simultaneous paradigm shifts:

1) from rate-based regulation of vertically integrated utilities to competitive markets for generation, with regional markets playing a growing role even in jurisdictions like Oregon that do not have organized wholesale markets themselves, and

2) from dependence on dispatchable central stations for most electricity generation to an electricity supply mix with high shares of intermittent renewables.

PESD is helping regulators and regulatory staff equip themselves for these paradigm shifts by hosting game-based workshops and, increasingly, deploying interactive e-learning resources on electricity market principles.

As PESD works to expand our e-learning program to energy regulators across the West, feedback from organizations like the Oregon Public Utility Commission is crucial to ensuring our plans meet the needs of regulatory staff. Funding from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies helped kickstart a pilot e-learning program with the Oregon Public Utility Commission (OPUC).

Pilot Program

This winter 2024/2025, 12 OPUC staff completed a suite of five PESD e-learning modules on electricity market principles and then participated in an online survey and zoom discussion to provide their input on what worked well, what could be improved, and how we might deploy e-learning tools more broadly within their organization and at other public utility commissions.

In survey feedback, participants found the modules to be well-paced (100% found the first three modules to be “just right” in their pacing), valuable (with 75% finding the modules “quite” or “extremely” valuable), and relevant to their work (75% strongly agree, 25% agree).

The zoom feedback session provided more context, and it was great to hear ideas from PUC staff on how to make the e-learning modules even more helpful. The modules are designed to cover universally applicable market topics, but the success of this session and the feedback from OPUC are encouraging us to consider how the e-learning modules might be paired with follow-on zoom discussions that delve into region-specific topics.

Next Steps

In the next six months, PESD will use the valuable information gained during this pilot to roll out the e-learning program to 100 regulators and regulatory staff at PUCs throughout the West. We are very excited to extend the impact of these modules to a wider geographic footprint!

More Information

The PESD e-learning program currently includes 6 modules on electricity markets: Fixed and Variable Costs, Offer-Based Markets, Uniform-Price versus Pay-as-Bid Auctions, Unilateral Market Power, Genco Incentives with Forward Contracts, and Transmission Constraints. Additional modules are in development. For more information about the e-learning program, please visit our webpage.

PESD thanks the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Impact Labs for the funding support, and Sudeshna Pal and the Oregon PUC participants for making this pilot possible. 

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PESD and OPUC meet to discuss e-learning modules

Regulators in emerging markets must improve energy reliability, grow supply, and add large quantities of wind and solar in an environment characterized by limited financial and institutional resources. And yet proponents of development and reform tend to prescribe regulatory strategies from rich countries that aren’t facing the same challenges, with generally poor outcomes.

In a new policy memo published by Energy for Growth Hub, PESD associate director Mark Thurber explains why "best practices" approaches remain so popular, why they miss the mark, and how situational regulation can improve outcomes.

Writing for Energy for Growth Hub, Program on Energy and Sustainable Development Associate Director Mark Thurber and Latimer Energy Managing Director Olu Verheijen explain how open-cycle gas turbines could end up being the most affordable option for lower-income countries -- and the choice most compatible with a high-renewables future.

The Biden administration has pledged to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030. A large share of these reductions would have to come from the power sector, with high-emitting coal-fired power plants being obvious targets for closure. Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) Associate Director Mark Thurber spoke on NPR's Here & Now about why phasing out coal-fired generation in the US by 2030 is an achievable goal -- and how we need to take care of affected workers along the way.  Listen to the interview.

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The PESD/CPUC Impact Lab has proposed an alternative resource adequacy mechanism that is robust to a world of high and solar generation: auctions of Standardized Fixed-Price Forward Contracts (SFPFCs) that ensure every megawatt-hour of energy consumed in the state is hedged through long-term financial contracts. Unlike capacity payments, the SFPFCs provide a strong financial incentive for generators to meet their commitments to supply reliable energy wherever and whenever it is needed. PESD research suggests this novel policy mechanism can provide enhanced reliability and major cost savings relative to the capacity payment approach.

The CPUC has initiated a stakeholder process to consider possible implementation of this proposal, and PESD is assisting with research, policy outreach, and development of market simulation games that will allow stakeholders to gain hands-on experience with how the SFPFC mechanism would work in a realistic electricity market.

In a virtual panel discussion November 19 hosted by MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), PESD Director Frank Wolak joined Alex Breckel, Associate Director of Strategic Research at Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), in addressing the impacts of power sector decarbonization on grid reliability. View recording

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Given the urgency of climate change, it might seem sensible for aid agencies and multilateral donors to stop funding fossil fuel projects -- any fossil fuel projects -- in developing countries. But Program on Energy and Sustainable Development Associate Director Mark Thurber (writing with Energy for Growth Hub's Todd Moss) explains why shutting the tap on gas in Africa is bad development policy and bad climate policy.  Read more