During the same week President Joe Biden announced his re-election bid, congressional Republicans stepped up attacks on his energy agenda, with the House of Representatives passing legislation Wednesday trying to use the debt ceiling to force cuts on incentives.

Republicans from both the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to FERC asking pointed questions about reliability, permitting and other issues as at least one of them gears up for oversight hearings. The Senate committee is holding its hearing on May 4, while the House committee has yet to schedule one.

The Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 cleared the House on Wednesday on a 217-215 vote, with four Republicans voting against it and no Democrats agreeing to the measure, which would raise the debt ceiling at the expense of key Biden administration priorities.

“The Limit, Save, Grow Act is a common-sense approach to return to fiscal sanity by putting an end to Democrats’ trillion-dollar spending sprees while ensuring veterans, Medicare and Social Security programs are strengthened and preserved,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other members of leadership said in a statement. “It will save taxpayers trillions of dollars by reclaiming unused COVID funds, stopping Biden’s student loan giveaway to the wealthy and defunding his army of IRS agents.”

Democrats uniformly trashed the bill, with the White House releasing a statement saying that “the president has made clear this bill has no chance of becoming law” and calling on the House to raise the debt limit without strings attached. House Energy Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said the legislation puts polluters ahead of people.

“The bill repeals key climate provisions that Democrats delivered with the Inflation Reduction Act last year that are already making a huge difference in the clean energy transition,” Pallone said in a statement. “Since its passage, we’ve seen about $28 billion in new domestic manufacturing investments. Companies have announced $242 billion in new clean power capital investments, and more than 142,000 clean energy jobs have been created across the nation.”

FERC Oversight

Senate ENR Committee Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) sent a letter to FERC on Wednesday asking commissioners a number of questions about reliability and natural gas permitting. Committee Chair Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) staff declined to comment on the hearing.

NERC, several ISO/RTOs and others have expressed serious concerns about the future of reliability on their grids, Barrasso said.

“You must do all that prudently may be done to enhance reliability and control electric costs for families and businesses,” he added.

Barrasso asked questions about what the impact of electrification efforts would have on reliability and affordability. He also focused on the recent report out of PJM saying about 40 GW is at risk of retirement largely because of state policies and the tight operations the RTO had near Christmas 2022. (See PJM Board Initiates Fast-Track Process to Address Reliability.)

“If electric grids suffer frequent reliability events or increasing reliability risks, doesn’t the underlying structure of the markets responsible for the grid become unjust and unreasonable under the” Federal Power Act? Barrasso asked.

The senator praised FERC’s recent approval of LNG export facilities in light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, but he also said the commission should get rid of the proposals pushed by former Chair Richard Glick to review the climate impacts of natural gas infrastructure.

“Both natural gas policy statements remain in draft form,” Barrasso said. “Under no circumstances should the commission attempt to finalize these policy statements in anything like their current form. They must be scrapped.”

In January the White House Council on Environmental Quality has issued an “interim GHG guidance” for federal agencies, and Barrasso asked whether and how FERC plans to apply that to its regulations.

House Energy Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) — chair of the committee’s Energy, Climate and Grid Security Subcommittee — also wrote FERC a letter on Wednesday focusing on reliability in ISO/RTO regions. They want answers by May 10.

They pointed to rolling blackouts in CAISO, shortages in MISO and SPP, and PJM’s recent report about the 40 GW of potential retirements.

“The commission, as the federal agency responsible for the regulation of the nation’s organized wholesale electricity markets, must better understand how RTOs/ISOs have affected electric reliability,” the committee leaders said. “It is long past due for the commission to fulfill its statutory role by conducting a thorough, unbiased analysis on the reliability impacts of a policy for which it has advocated for more than 20 years.”

The letter has several questions drilling into that topic including asking for a comparison between RTOs and traditional regulation when it comes to reliability. The letter also notes that generators have not been able to secure firm gas in the markets and asks if FERC ensure that market designs allow for that.

Some Want Solar Tariffs Back

Sen. Manchin also announced this week that he was signing onto a joint resolution under the Congressional Review Act that would reimpose tariffs on solar cells from Asia, which President Biden had suspended as it led to shortages in supply. The main sponsor of S.J. Resolution 15 is Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Manchin is the lone Democrat among nine co-sponsors.

“The United States relies on foreign nations, like China, for far too many of our energy needs, and failing to enforce our existing trade laws undermines the goals of the [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] and Inflation Reduction Act to onshore our energy supply chains, including solar,” said Manchin. “I cannot fathom why the administration and Congress would consider extending that reliance any longer and am proud to join this CRA to rescind the rule.”

A similar bill cleared the House Ways and Means Committee on April 19; the Solar Energy Industries Association criticized the proposal in response.

“The United States currently lacks the capacity to produce solar panels and cells in adequate volumes to meet domestic demand,” SEIA CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said. “The two-year duty moratorium allows planned solar installations to move forward while we scale domestic manufacturing in the near term. This strategic approach protects existing jobs while new ones are added, but it also helps sustain the robust environmental, national security and job-creating benefits offered by U.S. solar deployment.”