Mark Rodeffer’s June 1 commentary makes a valid accountability argument regarding the removal of the 80% renewable power purchase agreement (PPA) mandate from the 2018 CleanEnergy DC Act. However, the public record reveals a critical nuance: the removal was heavily urged by institutional voices — including the Public Service Commission, the DC Policy Center, and others — who warned that locking ratepayers into rigid, long-term Mid-Atlantic contracts was operationally infeasible and financially risky at the time.
More importantly, the 2018 PPA debate was entirely about energy charges — the baseline commodity cost of wind and solar electrons. It has little bearing on capacity charges, which are the separate, massive payments mandated by the regional grid operator PJM to guarantee power plants are ready on peak-demand days.
This distinction explains our current rate crisis. When PJM’s recent capacity auction skyrocketed tenfold from $30 to $270 per megawatt-day, DC ratepayers bore the full brunt. Because of DC’s 1990s generation divestiture, Pepco owns no power plants and has no self-supply buffer against wholesale swings. By contrast, Virginia’s Dominion Energy owns its generation fleet, insulating its customers from the same market spike. Retaining the 2018 PPA provision would have lowered our energy product costs slightly, but it would have left DC fully exposed to this catastrophic capacity spike.
As the People’s Counsel noted to the Council back in 2018, DC’s energy policy needed to account for pending changes in federal wholesale markets — a warning that went unheeded. The true remedy lies in targeting FERC Docket EL25-49, where data center cost allocations are actively being revised. The right analysis has been in the room since 2018; our leaders must now direct DC’s ratepayer advocates to fight where the bills are actually set.
Fritz Mulhauser, Capitol Hill
