PSEG Chairman, President and CEO Ralph Izzo yesterday questioned a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposal that transmission no longer be built just to ensure the reliability of nation's electricity grid, but also to advance broad public policy goals.

"To build a transmission system on the shifting sands of broader public policy goals is to risk subjecting consumers to higher costs than they would otherwise bear, for transmission they don't necessarily need," Izzo cautioned in prepared remarks at Transmission Policy Siting Summit.

These public policy goals could justify an expansion and socialization of transmission with the supposed "beneficiaries" of this build-out identified across a wide geographic area, Izzo said. A policy based on the idea that everyone benefits equally from national transmission projects ignores the impact on customers' energy bills and undermines the competitiveness of local clean energy efforts, he added. Every region and state should be given the opportunity to invest in local renewable efforts that reap benefits, including jobs, he added.

"We should not design a transmission system around the premise that wind resources should be concentrated where the wind blows hardest, or solar power where the sun shines the brightest, and then we should ask all consumers to pay the cost of getting these products to market," Izzo said. Instead, let the market decide which are the best technologies and locations for renewable energy projects, Izzo urged.

"There is no question that transmission will be needed to link renewable resources to electricity consumers," Izzo stated. "But that does not mean we should use transmission policy to drive the development of renewable energy."

PSEG is a member of the Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy, which was a sponsor of the conference. "We all agree that new transmission must be developed in the most cost-effective way for customers; that no one should pay for something that gives them no benefit; and no one, through transmission policy, should be denied the opportunity of local economic development," Izzo said.