Background for those not in the know: in the Northeast, the electric grid is "deregulated." This means that the power plants sell their power on the open market, like any other commodity. The organization that oversees this regional market, PJM, has a market for energy. Power plants bid how much money per kWh they get paid. Though, it's actually denominated in dollars per megawatthour, $/MWh. Now PJM aren't exactly dummies, and knew that electricity isn't really a commodity. You can't store it. It is consumed the instant it is created. So having too much power today, and too little power tomorrow, doesn't even out. So they created a second market, a market for capacity. Here, power plants bid as well. They say "I can provide X megawatts to the grid Y% of the time for Z dollars per megawatt-day." PJM adds all of this up to ensure they have enough power each day, and presto, everyone gets paid the amount of the last bid. Now PJM released their latest auction results earlier this month. The capacity price went from $29/MWd to $270/MWd, but Baltimore and Virginia were even higher, at $470/MWd. Why? Because anti-fossil-fuel climate policies in the Northeast are causing coal and gas plants to shut down left and right. In Baltimore, their last two coal plants are supposed to shut down in 2025. But PJM is paying them extra to stay open, because they predict blackouts if they shut down. States climate policies are having a very real effect, and ratepayers are going to feel it now.