Charged up: Energy company general counsel helps to keep the lights on and the power running

Kathleen A. Carrigan, general counsel at Holyoke, Mass.-based ISO New England, has perhaps the most important job in New England for all companies: She keeps the lights on and the power running.
Her company was created 10 years ago by the federal government to administer Northeast electric markets following deregulation. ISO oversees regional bulk power capacity and directs traffic on the electricity highway – keeping the transmission lines flowing and redirecting traffic to weak points in the grid.
Carrigan has helped generate cleaner, more reliable electricity in her seven years with the company. She also helps attract “market participants” to provide power into the Northeast grid. Since deregulation, 300 participants are now involved, an increase of about 200.
Carrigan and her legal team have come up with ways to improve the number of companies competing to sell power into the grid. For example, they have created “insurance policy” energy contracts where companies guarantee to sell energy in reserve to ensure the region is covered during peak spikes and never suffers outages.
She also works on educating policymakers on the importance of greater energy diversity and investments in renewable energy, such as wind, coal gasification, hydrogen cells and biofuels.
In-House recently caught up with Carrigan to gain some insight on her job.

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In-House: What are the challenges involved in working in six states with different regulatory processes?
Carrigan: It is generally true in New England that when one state starts enacting certain requirements, other states seem to follow suit, although the requirements are not always the same. When you look at what states define as renewable energy, each state has a different definition. Then there is the regional greenhouse-gas initiative that all six New England states have signed.

In-House: Do you expect to be doing a lot of work in the future on renewable energy issues?
Carrigan: The energy issue continues to be the topic of discussion from a number of fronts, and it has become more focused on environmental requirements as a result of the global climate change that has been brought to everyone’s attention. So the regional greenhouse-gas initiative will be very important going forward to insure that we have reliable and clean energy to serve New England.

In-House: Do you often use outside counsel?
Carrigan: We use a number of outside counsel for a variety of purposes. We have two FERC outside counsels we use. We have several outside firms for state regulatory work, and we have outside counsel for our civil litigation work. We just brought on board Brown, Rudnick, [Berlack, Israels] in Boston to handle our state transmission siting work in Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. ISO is responsible for providing reliable electricity service throughout the six New England states and efficiently managing the $9 billion wholesale energy market. We are very active at the state level, and we’re involved in working with state regulatory bodies as well as state legislators and the New England congressional delegation.

In-House: What are your primary responsibilities?
Carrigan: I’m responsible for all legal matters involving the company, including state and federal regulatory matters as well as civil litigation. I am also responsible for the corporate communications and external affairs departments, which have a combined staff of 13. The legal department has eight lawyers that report to me and a vice president/assistant general counsel. We make approximately two to three regulatory filings a week at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C. We currently have 35 open proceedings. [We’re] responsible for updating and monitoring the filing dates and requirements, tracking down and keeping the attorneys on schedule with filing requirements.