Severin Borenstein elected ISO Board of Governors Chair
FOLSOM, Calif. – At its final meeting of 2024 today, the California Independent System Operator (ISO) Board of Governors elected Severin Borenstein as its new Chair and named Joe Eto as Vice-Chair for the next year, effective Dec. 31.
The election elevates Borenstein from his current role as Vice-Chair. He will replace Chair Jan Schori in the annual rotating of the gavel.
Borenstein was first appointed to the Board in 2019. He is E.T. Grether Professor of the Graduate School in Business Administration and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business, and Faculty Director of the Energy Institute at Haas, at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on business competition, strategy, and regulation. He has published extensively on the electricity, natural gas and oil markets. Borenstein is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA.
“The ISO Board of Governors has vital work to complete in the next year as the state advances toward a clean, modern, efficient and interconnected electric grid,” Borenstein said. “The Board continues to navigate the resulting challenges in operating electricity systems and markets with a wide variety of resources, some of which played almost no role less than a decade ago.”
The ISO Board typically “passes the gavel” at its December meeting, giving the outgoing chair an opportunity to reflect on the past year. During Schori’s tenure, the ISO added thousands of megawatts of new clean energy, made sweeping overhauls to its grid interconnection process, and approved a structure for regional governance seen as vital to building consensus for a west-wide electricity market.
“This was an important year for reforms designed to expand transmission infrastructure and improve inter-regional partnerships,” Schori said. “Ensuring grid reliability as we integrate orders of magnitude greater amounts of renewables onto the grid will continue to be my focus as I resume my role as a Board member.”
Eto was first appointed to the Board in 2023, and has a robust electricity technology and markets background to support the ISO in guiding policy decisions. Following a nearly 40-year career, Eto retired from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in 2021. He remains engaged with the Berkeley Lab through his collaboration with the Electricity Markets and Policy Department in the Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts Division, and the Grid Integration Group in the Energy Storage and Demand Resources Division.
Visit the Board of Governors leadership page to view biographies on all Board members.
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The California Independent System Operator (ISO) is a nonprofit public benefit corporation focused on the continuous improvement and secure operation of a reliable grid for the benefit of consumers. It provides comprehensive grid planning, and ensures open, nondiscriminatory access to one of the world’s largest networks of high-voltage transmission power lines and operates a $9 billion competitive electricity market.
The ISO is at the forefront of integrating renewable power, storage systems and advanced technologies onto the grid to support state energy policies and decarbonization goals, while keeping reliability and cost effectiveness at the core of its operations and ensuring a sustainable and resilient energy future.
The Western Energy Imbalance Market (WEIM) is a real-time wholesale energy trading market that enables participants anywhere in the West to buy and sell energy when needed. Set to launch in 2026, the Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM) extends market operations into the day-ahead timeframe. The Western Energy Markets Governing Body, designed by regional stakeholders, shares authority with the ISO Board of Governors to advance rules specific to participation in the WEIM and the EDAM.