Under Pressure.

On a Tuesday afternoon last November, New England residents packed into a downtown Providence conference room for a board meeting with ISO New England, the region's electric grid operator. They sat alongside state officials and technical experts through a four-hour agenda touching on energy supply and prices, among other topics.

Community members were more than happy to wait. After all, this was an unprecedented opportunity: the first public meeting ever held by the nonprofit entity responsible for keeping electricity flowing to the six New England states.

When they finally got their chance at the mic, speaker after speaker implored ISO New England to respond to the climate emergency--to use its considerable power (pun intended) to help get climate-polluting fuels like gas off the grid and more clean energy like wind and solar on.

It was a momentous moment, one born out of frustration with an entity many of us have never heard of but that holds an outsized influence on the kind of energy that fuels our lives. Before last fall, the ISO had never opened a board meeting to the public in its 25-year history. That was just one example of why activists have criticized the ISO for a lack of transparency and public accountability. It's also one way the grid operator has long sidestepped talking about the role it could play in helping to avert the climate crisis.

But the ISO's days of closed doors and climate inaction may be ending--thanks to CLF, our partners, and a growing chorus of activists calling on the grid operator to change its ways.

Reforming Our Regional Electric Grid Operator

As the entity that controls our region's electricity, ISO New England should...