Recent policy reforms in regional transmission planning have improved most of the ISO/RTO scores in the latest iteration of Americans for a Clean Energy Grid’s Transmission Planning and Development Report Card. (See ACEG Report Checks in on Regional Planning After Order 1920.)

Reforms are starting to improve outcomes in several regions, but rising demand from data centers, manufacturing and electrification are increasing the cost of delay, especially where planning processes remain incremental or reactive.

“Progress is real, but it’s uneven — and demand growth means delay now carries real costs for customers,” ACEG Executive Director Christina Hayes said in a statement. “Where regions have embraced proactive, long-term planning, we’re seeing better results. Where planning remains fragmented, reliability risks and costs increasingly show up in household electricity bills.”

Grades assess performance at the regional level and do not assign responsibility to single institutions, instead reflecting the collective actions of utilities, regional planning organizations, states and other stakeholders. To earn top grades, regions must adopt proactive, long-term, scenario-based planning that evaluates multiple system benefits, integrates regional and interregional needs, and delivers transmission at the pace required to meet rising demand.

CAISO, MISO and SPP continue to show the benefits of proactive, long-term regional planning. SPP’s Coordinated Planning Process, once approved by FERC, would be an important reform that merges transmission planning and generator interconnection planning, the report said.

ISO-NE, NYISO and PJM have shown meaningful improvement due to FERC Order 1920 compliance filings and greater engagement with states.

ERCOT got a C, with the report highlighting the Permian Basin Reliability plan to electrify oil and gas drilling and data centers, which was released in July 2024 with options for 345-Kv and a 765-Kv portfolio. The Texas PUC picked the 765-Kv option in April 2025. While Texas has seen plenty of transmission planned, the report noted it still is done in a “siloed” style, which kept it from a higher grade.

Many regions — including all the non-RTO regions — “continue to face significant gaps in both regional and interregional planning frameworks,” the report said, “In these regions, transmission development often occurs through individual utility investments or ad hoc coordination rather than durable, region-scale planning processes, limiting the ability to fully capture systemwide benefits.”

The West, which is split into three regions, is meeting under the Western Transmission Expansion Coalition (WestTEC), a voluntary interregional planning process that the report called “one of the best interregional transmission planning practices in the country.”

The first report card from ACEG came out in 2023 and ranked the regions before Order 1920 was issued, while the second one from 2024 did not change the grades and checked in after that order. Now, the report takes the requirements from Order 1920 and adds a new focus on interregional transmission.

Load growth forecasts have changed significantly since the last report, with Grid Strategies’ summary of nationwide, five-year peak load forecasts going from 24 GW three years ago to 150 GW in its most recent update. Load growth is affecting transmission development, with FERC saying it was the main driver for 1,000 miles of new facilities in 2024.

“While today’s load growth can tempt a crisis‑response mindset focused solely on short‑term fixes, the industry must move beyond ad hoc solutions and embrace long‑term regional and interregional planning,” the report said. “Proactive, holistic long‑term planning that also accommodates near‑term needs has proven to deliver the lowest costs to consumers. It captures economies of scale that ‘just‑in‑time’ projects miss and enables high‑capacity upgrades to come online ahead of demand.”

The report looked at interregional planning and gave the country an overall “C-minus” that reflects continued reliance on voluntary coordination rather than a formal requirement for regions to implement interregional planning best practices capable of finding the highest value projects.

“The takeaway is not that nothing is working,” Hayes said. “Transmission planning works when it’s proactive, coordinated and long term. The challenge now is scaling those successes fast enough — across and between regions — to keep electricity affordable and reliable for all Americans as demand continues to grow.”