The North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) is to vote on recommendations to improve coordination between the electric and natural gas industries this week, with plans to send them on to FERC and NERC by the end of the month, a co-chair of the effort said Tuesday.

The NAESB Gas-Electric Harmonization Forum is close to wrapping up the effort, which started in the aftermath of the February 2021 winter storm that left millions without power in Texas for days, forum co-chair Robert Gee said at a press briefing held by the United States Energy Association. (See NAESB Confirms Gas-electric Forum in the Works.)

“We’re coming out with a set of recommendations we’re going to give to NERC and FERC at the end of this month,” said Gee, who runs consulting firm Gee Strategies Group. “Some of them will result in the creation of business standards by NAESB. Others will be policy calls that we’re going to ask FERC and NERC to weigh in on, particularly FERC.”

Then it will be up to the commission, with input from stakeholders in both industries, to carry them out. If they “fail to move the needle” enough, then it might be time for Congress to step in, Gee said, but FERC should be able to make changes that improve coordination between the two increasingly interdependent industries.

Gee and his co-chairs have released a set of strawman recommendations, and other stakeholders have filed comments on those ahead of a conference call set for Thursday. Voting on the recommendations will follow that call before the final package is submitted at the end of the month.

The strawman recommendations include many aimed at improving the two industries’ awareness of what is happening on their respective systems, especially when they are stressed by high demand. They say states with competitive markets should work to ensure that natural gas markets are fully functioning 24/7 in preparation for events when demand is expected to rise sharply for both power and gas. FERC rules already require interstate pipelines to schedule and operate 24/7 to support the wholesale gas market, but the commission would have to step in when state authorities lack the ability to make gas available at all hours during high-demand events.

The recommendations also call on ISO/RTOs to move up the day-ahead scheduling process to better align with the natural gas day and, if not already under consideration, to launch stakeholder processes to consider multiday-ahead scheduling.

FERC and state regulators who oversee competitive energy markets should consider whether market mechanisms are enough to ensure that generators have the needed arrangements to secure firm gas, storage or other ways to mitigate supply shortfalls during cold snaps. If not, then they should consider nonmarket solutions to ensure fuel availability, including funding mechanisms borne or shared by consumers, the recommendations say.

Though even with a firm contract, generators during cold weather events have found that they cannot access natural gas, Gee said.

“We need to revise the system so that the power generators are able to access gas on a contractual basis going into a long weekend — let’s say a three-day weekend, where we’ve had most of these acute shortages occur primarily in the winter — to allow them to access gas when it’s liquid, under terms and conditions which are economically acceptable to them,” Gee said.

Such long weekends exacerbate the guesswork generators do when it comes to buying gas: They might wind up with less than needed, or have to take more, facing costs either way, he added.

“We need to figure out a way to rationalize that process where we can synchronize also and harmonize what’s called the gas day and the electric day, and the contracting practices so that it elevates the power generators’ ability to access fuel during critical peak periods, without having to undertake an unreasonable economic risk in contracting for gas,” Gee said.

FERC has had such gas-electric coordination issues on its plate for years, but it has been able to get by without making major reforms of the industries for more than a decade, he added.

One cooperative in Virginia had signed up for firm natural gas deliveries, but during the December winter storm last year, it did not receive any and was unable to produce power when electric demand was spiking, said National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson.

“There’s not the most obvious answer of where you balance those risks, but it does create more pressure on the electric sector because, at the end of the day, the electric sector is the one supposed to keep the lights on all the time,” Matheson said. “And you’ve got these competing dynamics that don’t always match up as well as you’d like. And particularly in the extreme storm events, that’s where it gets so much more complicated.”

Efforts to better harmonize the two industries and their scheduling practices are definitely needed to improve their performance in the future, he added.

The Electric Power Supply Association weighed in on the strawman proposal, agreeing that demand for electricity and natural gas will continue to rise, especially during cold weather events. Better coordination is important going forward, and the trade group supports using markets to accomplish that.

“Resolving the pain points that have emerged between the gas and electric sectors as they have moved much closer together in securing supply and accessing delivery infrastructure has been and will only grow more essential to meet our nation’s power needs,” CEO Todd Snitchler said in a statement. “EPSA and our members have been deeply engaged in ongoing efforts to address gas-electric coordination, improve reliability and help ensure that consumers and our critical services have access to cost-effective, reliable power at all times. We are optimistic that improvements will be made and hope our recommendations will provide constructive insight to develop durable solutions to this urgent issue.”