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Opinion of Thomas, J.
ity customers." Order No. 888-A, at 30,176.7 And it is certainly possible that utilities that own or control lines on the grid discriminate against entities that seek to use their transmission lines regardless of whether the utilities themselves bundle or unbundle their transactions.8 The fact that FERC found undue discrimination with respect to transmission used in connection with both bundled and unbundled wholesale sales and unbundled retail sales indicates that such discrimination exists regardless of whether the transmission is used in bundled or unbundled sales. Without more, FERC's conclusory statement that "unbundling of retail transmission" is not "necessary" lends little support to its decision not to regulate such transmission. And it sim-7 FERC likewise states in Order No. 888, at 31,634, that the "legal and policy cornerstone of these rules is to remedy undue discrimination in access to the monopoly owned transmission wires that control whether and to whom electricity can be transported in interstate commerce." FERC also recognized that to comply with the statute's mandate, it "must eliminate the remaining patchwork of closed and open jurisdictional transmission systems and ensure that all these systems, including those that already provide some form of open access, cannot use monopoly power over transmission to unduly discriminate against others." Id., at 31,635.
8 For example, the Electric Power Supply Association explains that transmission owning utilities may discriminate against entities that seek to use their transmission systems, thereby preventing the entities from using their lines, in the following ways: (1) They may block available transfer capacity—the capability of the physical transmission network to facilitate activity over and above its committed uses—by overscheduling transmission for their own retail loads across "valuable" transmission paths; (2) they may improperly avoid certain costs that other entities would be subject to; or (3) they may fail to make accurate disclosure of available transfer capability, causing "serious difficulties for suppliers attempting to schedule electricity sales across their transmission facilities." Brief for Respondent Electric Power Supply Association 7-9. Similarly, petitioner Enron explains that a "utility can reserve superior transmission capacity for its own bundled retail sales, at times even closing its facilities to other transmissions . . . forcing competitors of the utility to scramble for less direct, less predictable and more expensive transmission options." Brief for Petitioner in No. 00-809, pp. 41-42.
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