WASHINGTON — FERC’s enforcement powers have been impacted by some recent court cases, and the commission itself has some new priorities, experts said at a panel Friday during the Energy Bar Association’s Annual Meeting.
The commission for a long time had four main priorities when it comes to enforcement: market manipulation; serious violations of reliability standards; threats to transparency; and anticompetitive conduct, said Jones Day partner David Applebaum, a six-year FERC veteran and former director of the Division of Investigations. But in late 2021, it added a fifth: threats to the nation’s infrastructure and associated impacts on the environment and neighboring communities.
“I wouldn’t categorize the addition as any indication that we were investigating or penalizing conduct that had previously gone unaddressed, but rather as an indication that we had seen a compliance concern in this area,” FERC Office of Enforcement Director Janel Burdick said. “And specifically, I’m talking about violations of hydroelectric licenses, as well as certificate orders associated with [Natural Gas Act] Sections 3 and 7.”
While so far the new policy only applies to dams and natural gas infrastructure — with FERC getting some expanded authority over electric transmission in National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors — the commission could start to pursue similar cases in the power industry. Burdick, however, said those issues are still being hammered out by the commission, so it is unclear how this would play out.
One example of its new focus was a $700,000 settlement FERC approved with the natural gas storage facility outside Houston called Tres Palacios because it failed to conduct sonar surveys of its salt caverns as required in its certificate, said Bracewell partner Charles Mills. The firm admitted that it had not done the survey and even asked for an extension, which was denied (IN21-3).
“The things that can somewhat be taken away from it are: There was no finding of negligence, no finding harm, in order to find a violation,” Mills said. “It appears to be somewhat strict liability; if that certificate says you must do something, then you’ve got to do it.”
The Tres Palacios case was straightforward, but other cases involving the new priority could involve more litigation, such as when FERC pursues enforcement against a pipeline for its post-construction cleanup activities, in which whether that work was done properly can be a matter for debate, Mills said.
FERC has long pursued market manipulation cases, and some of those have worked their way through the courts after years of litigation and have set some precedent.
The commission alleged that BP manipulated natural gas prices in the Houston Ship Channel following Hurricane Ike in 2008 to benefit its positions elsewhere. In a decision last October, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with BP on jurisdiction, said William Barksdale, energy regulatory counsel with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Most of the transactions in question were intrastate, and while FERC claimed authority because they impacted markets it regulates, the court disagreed and threw those out. The court told the commission to recalculate the fine based on the much smaller group of transactions it did have jurisdiction over, Barksdale said.
Another case where FERC managed to dodge having precedent set against some of its powers of disgorgement came in litigation with Coaltrain Energy, which is one of the firms that allegedly manipulated PJM’s market in the summer of 2010, said Mills. It and other firms used otherwise unprofitable up-to-congestion transactions to maximize marginal loss surplus allocation (MLSA) payments.
Coaltrain argued that FERC did not have the authority to order disgorgements, and the court agreed with the firm. The case was getting ready to go to trial, but FERC settled with Coaltrain for the $4 million in disgorgement alone, dropping significantly higher civil penalties it had initially sought, and got the court to vacate its opinion.
“So that’s over $50 million in fines [removed] from the case, but disgorgement is preserved,” said Mills. “To me, this indicates the importance that FERC places on disgorgement as a remedy but also [the] concern that its jurisdiction is being challenged, and they’re losing that jurisdictional point, and they don’t want that.”
Another one of the firms that allegedly engaged in the UTC-for-MLSA scheme back in 2010, Powhatan Energy Fund, recently wrapped up the litigation in a default judgment after it declared bankruptcy. That decision issued in March was important because it shows the commission has been winning on jurisdictional arguments, said Seema Jain, branch chief of Enforcement’s Division of Investigations.
“This is an important decision, because it’s the only final judgment on an enforcement case under the Federal Power Act,” said Jain. “So, you know, I want to highlight that. And the court granted FERC’s motion for default judgment against Powhatan and ordered disgorgement of $3.4 million, as well as $16.8 million in civil penalties. As part of that order, the court found that the commission’s well pleaded complaint and penalty order established that Powhatan committed market manipulation.”
Entergy (NYSE: ETR) said Wednesday its Texas subsidiary has struck a rate case settlement with state regulators to recover $2.3 billion for grid-modernization improvements it has completed.
Entergy Texas last year filed for base rate and rider revenues designed to collect $1.3 billion per year in non-fuel retail, an 11.2% ($131.4 million) increase on average across all customers classes. The settlement provides for a $54 million increase in base rate revenues, exclusive of incremental to costs being realigned from various riders and recovery factors, resulting in a non-fuel revenue requirement of $1.23 billion (53719).
The Texas Office of Public Utility Counsel, Texas Industrial Energy Consumers, Sierra Club, Kroger, Federal Executive Agencies and Walmart all signed on to the agreement, which is pending final approval from the PUC.
Entergy Texas spokesperson Kendra James said the settlement boils down to regulators agreeing to find that the company’s investments were prudent, reasonable and made for the customers’ benefit.
“It’s important to note that this amount is not an amount by which Entergy Texas rates will change. A portion of the cost of these investments will be recovered annually over the period in which they serve customers, which is decades for most large assets,” James said in an emailed statement to RTO Insider.
Entergy included the 993-MW Montgomery County Power Station, which went into commercial operations in January 2021 north of Houston, as part of the recent infrastructure upgrades. The plant was attributed as part of the reason MISO ultimately withdrew support for the only competitive transmission project it has ever recommended for MISO South. (See FERC Rejects Last-ditch Effort to Save Tx Project.)
The utility also pointed to its recent $41.3 million acquisition of the gas-fired, 146-MW Hardin County Peaking Facility from East Texas Electric Cooperative.
“Entergy Texas is continuously investing in customer-driven solutions to build a more reliable and resilient energy future for Southeast Texas communities,” Entergy Texas CEO Eliecer Viamontes said in a press release. “We are committed to balancing customer affordability with critical investments to help reduce outages and continue to strengthen the power grid.”
The company said it will also spend more than $2.5 billion by 2025 to continue replacing aging generation and harden infrastructure. It received the PUC’s approval last year to build the 1.2-GW natural gas and hydrogen-powered Orange County Advanced Power Station. Entergy recently broke ground on the project and expects it to be in service by 2026. (See Entergy, NextEra Tout Clean Energy Efforts.)
Entergy said the settlement’s terms will help ensure it stays “financially healthy and able to make the significant capital investments required to provide affordable, reliable and sustainable power.”
WASHINGTON — Utility regulators should see planning for the grid’s transition as a practical — rather than political — act, FERC Commissioner Allison Clements told the Energy Bar Association’s annual meeting Thursday.
The nation’s grid is old and in need of upgrades, which will have to be resilient against increasing instances of extreme weather and cyber and physical attacks, while accommodating the changing resource mix. All those issues generate plenty of political debate, but Clements said it’s not her job to wade into that.
“It is the regulator’s job, and the utilities we regulate, and the stakeholders who are interested in the outcomes of that regulation, to protect customers and maintain reliability in the face of these challenging realities,” Clements said.
FERC and others with responsibility over the power system must tackle all the small and very large problems those changes produce at the same time. One of the biggest keys to it all is changing how transmission gets built.
“Right now, today, there is money on the table,” Clements said. “There is efficiency in the existing transmission system that we are not taking advantage of. And as I’ve been joking lately, I never thought in my life that I would become a cheerleader for something called grid enhancing technologies [GETs]. But I am a cheerleader for these things.”
GETs do involve changing the way the grid is run, but they are simple technologies and offer massive savings compared with building more transmission. Brattle Group has estimated that GETs could help integrate twice the volume of renewables as exist today without expanding transmission at all, so even if the real number is just 50% more renewables, that means massive savings, Clements said.
Tapping into the demand side can also make that transition easier, as evidenced by the 1.2 GW cut in demand resulting from a text message sent out by California’s government during last September’s heatwave. The text has come under criticism for scaring some consumers into thinking the grid was collapsing, but Clements said it at least showed there is plenty of untapped potential on the demand side.
“It’s not to suggest that we should go around scaring people by asking them to reduce demand,” Clements said. “The reality is that’s an opportunity that can be systematized.”
‘Never-ending Lunch Line’
FERC does have a role as it continues to work through issues around Order 2222 compliance, which required RTOs and ISOs to open their markets to aggregations of distributed energy resources.
The demand side and GETs are some of the “small things” that can help address the grid’s transition, but FERC is also focused on the larger issue of trying to clear out the 2,000 GW backlog in the country’s interconnection queues. (See LBNL: Interconnection Queues Grew 40% in 2022.)
“It’s like a never-ending lunch line, right?” Clements said. “You just wait and wait and wait. And it’s hard, and it’s expensive, and you lose efficiency and resources drop out of line.”
FERC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) that includes reforms that emerged as best practices around the country such as dealing with projects on a first-ready, first-served basis and processing them in clusters instead of one at a time. But the interconnection queues also need broader transmission planning reforms, which are the subject of another pending NOPR at the commission.
“I don’t think interconnection gets you all the way there, if you don’t fix the transmission system planning, and this maybe is perhaps the hardest, and the longest term,” said Clements. “But again, it’s a thing that FERC has taken action on. We issued a bipartisan proposal to improve regional transmission system planning and cost allocation.”
A major feature of that NOPR is longer-term scenario-based transmission planning that tries to figure out where generation and load will come from in the future and plan accordingly. It is impossible to predict the future, but by studying different scenarios, planners could come up with grid upgrades that produce significant benefits in multiple scenarios, Clements said.
Clements pointed to Edison Electric Institute figures showing that investor-owned utilities invested almost $28 billion in transmission in 2021, a figure that rose to about $30 billion last year.
“That’s the status quo,” she said. “So, whether or not FERC takes action on this rule, money is getting spent. Customers are ultimately holding the bag for that, right? We need to help direct that investment to a way where customers get the most bang for their buck — the most benefit at the lowest cost. And I think that this proposal has the opportunity to do that. Of course, we have to finalize it.”
LS Power said Monday it has reached an agreement with Brazos Electric Power Cooperative to acquire 2.15 GW of its gas-fired generation in the ERCOT market.
The deal is a result of last year’s bankruptcy settlement between Brazos and the Texas grid operator, in which the cooperative agreed to sell its generation and become a transmission and distribution utility. Brazos owns about 4 GW of natural gas-fired capacity in ERCOT. (See Bankruptcy Judge Approves ERCOT-Brazos Settlement.)
The cooperative filed for bankruptcy in the wake of the February 2021 winter storm after being billed for $2.1 billion in wholesale prices. ERCOT later revised the amount due to the market to $1.89 billion. Brazos will use some of the transaction’s revenues to settle its debt.
LS Power is acquiring three plants as it continues to evaluate expansion opportunities in Texas:
Jack County, two baseload combined cycle units totaling 1,297 MW near Bridgeport;
Johnson County, a 280-MW combined cycle plant near Cleburne; and
RW Miller, four peaking units totaling 568 MW near Palo Pinto.
The company will fold the generation into a special-purpose affiliate that includes dual-fuel capability, firm gas and storage arrangements, and on-site fuel oil storage.
“These three generation projects we are acquiring provide critical, reliable energy supply to an ERCOT market that is experiencing continued load growth,” LS Power Generation President Nathan Hanson said in a statement. “These projects provide for considerable flexibility and operational redundancy, which are key to balancing the intermittency of renewables and supporting ERCOT’s reliability requirements.”
The acquisition will increase LS Power’s gas generation fleet to 16 GW. The gas fleet is a key element of its energy transition portfolio, the company said. It expects the transaction to close in early June after receiving regulatory approval.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. — EPA Administrator Michael Regan on Thursday said his agency’s newly proposed carbon dioxide emission standards for power plants target “the most egregious sources” of pollution so “we can be sure that we don’t jeopardize the reliability” of the grid.
Regan was speaking to reporters after an event held at the University of Maryland College Park celebrating the official release of the standards earlier that morning. The complex rulemaking would set nationwide standards on CO2-emitting plants based on multiple variables, such as fuel type and frequency of usage. (See related story, EPA Proposes New Emissions Standards for Power Plants.)
They would require most new and existing large-capacity plants to use either carbon capture and sequestration or hydrogen co-firing no later than 2040, with some facilities subject to earlier deadlines based on characteristics. The most stringent standards are reserved for coal plants and new gas plants.
Left out are existing smaller, peaking gas units, defined as less than 300 MW with a capacity factor of less than 50%. For those, EPA is seeking comment on how it “should approach its legal obligation to establish emission guidelines.”
Regan was asked whether he was concerned about the number of gas-fired units left unregulated.
“I think the regulation covers a lot, quite frankly; the most and the largest,” he said. “Some of the smaller sources, some of those peaker plants that run less frequently, we will be thinking about how we tackle those as well. What we want to do with those [plants] is not use a blunt object. We want to be more surgical.”
Regan also emphasized that EPA had been consulting with utility CEOs, grid operators and states over the past two years to give the power sector “the certainty that they’re looking for without compromising reliability or affordability.” The proposal “takes into account all the energy requirements and needs of this country in a way that doesn’t compromise reliability, but the impacts to costs are also extremely negligible. So we believe we’ve threaded a really good needle here.”
Republicans do not agree.
The Biden administration’s “rush-to-green agenda is shutting down American energy and threatening the security and reliability of our electric grid,” Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) said in a statement. “We’re currently witnessing an electricity reliability crisis unfolding across the country. … The latest power plant rules being proposed by the EPA will make these problems worse by shutting down reliable energy sources prematurely and adding costly new burdens on sources like natural gas, which is responsible for a significant portion of our emissions reductions.”
Nor does Electric Power Supply Association CEO Todd Snitchler, who said that “once again, aspirational policy is getting ahead of operational reality. If finalized, these aggressive rules will undoubtedly drive up energy costs and lead to a substantial number of power plant retirements when experts have warned that we are already facing a reliability crisis due to accelerated retirements of dispatchable resources.”
But the Edison Electric Institute in a statement echoed some of Regan’s points, saying it valued “that EPA has constructively engaged with EEI and our member companies over the past 18 months, and we look forward to continuing to work with Administrator Regan and his team throughout the rulemaking process.”
The organization said it had lobbied for aligning the standards’ compliance deadlines with utilities’ existing transition plans and recognizing “the critical role existing and new natural gas generation plays — and will continue to play — in integrating more renewable energy and maintaining reliability.” It had also urged “a range of compliance flexibilities,” including hydrogen co-firing.
Legal Scrutiny
Environmental groups were nearly uniformly positive about the proposal, saying it would help the U.S. meet its emission-reduction goals.
“I think all of our stakeholders understand just how strong and how strategic this rule is. We’re also all living in a post-West Virginia [v. EPA] time,” Regan said, referring to the Supreme Court decision last year that struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.
EEI noted in its statement that, “for the third time in nine years, EPA is proposing to limit carbon emissions from power plants using Clean Air Act Section 111.”
The group was referring to the CPP and the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, the latter of which would be repealed by the new rules.
“Last year, the Supreme Court threw out the Environmental Protection Agency’s overreaching mandates on power plant emissions,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “The court rightfully confirmed Congress, not the EPA, has the authority to create environmental policy. Nothing has changed since then to give the unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at the EPA this authority.”
The court threw out the CPP, however, because it found that EPA lacks authority to compel generation shifting, ruling that it was a “set of state cap-and-trade schemes.” The agency is limited to requiring steps that individual plants can make “inside the fence line,” the court said. (See Supreme Court Rejects EPA Generation Shifting.)
But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, announced on Wednesday that he would oppose every nominee to EPA before the committee because he said the agency did not even have the authority to regulate power plants’ emissions.
“Neither the [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] nor the IRA gave new authority to regulate power plant emission standards,” Manchin said. “However, I fear that this administration’s commitment to their extreme ideology overshadows their responsibility to ensure long-lasting energy and economic security.”
Regan on Thursday reiterated that he was confident that the Biden administration’s version would be upheld. Asked how the failure of the CPP influenced the new rules, he said the proposal “is a completely separate rule from the Clean Power Plan.”
“This rule is well within the bounds of our statutory authority and the West Virginia Supreme Court decision,” he said. “We feel really good that we’re using the Clean Air Act’s traditional authority. We’re looking at the backdrop of the Inflation Reduction Act and those incentives for advanced technologies to put out a very strong rule that is really aggressive as it relates to combating the climate crisis. [I’m] very proud and very comfortable and confident that this is a very strong, legally sound, durable rule.”
NERC’s Board of Trustees on Thursday approved the organization’s first-ever Level 3 alert — its highest-level action, indicating specific steps deemed essential for certain stakeholders to ensure reliable operation of the grid — at its quarterly meeting.
The alert, which concerns preparations for extreme cold weather, will be issued May 15.
The trustees — along with the Member Representatives Committee — gathered in person at NERC’s recently renovated offices in D.C. on Wednesday and Thursday, with other attendees observing via teleconference. The arrangement was announced at NERC’s November MRC meeting in New Orleans. (See “Board Makes Meeting Changes Official,” NERC Board of Trustees/MRC Briefs: Nov. 15-16, 2022.)
NERC’s next board and MRC meetings will be held in Ottawa, Ontario, Aug. 16-17 and will be fully in person, while the November meetings will be entirely virtual.
Board Chair Kenneth DeFontes thanked attendees for their willingness to adapt to the new format, saying the hybrid meeting schedule “opened the door to a new way … to engage [that is] going to be very beneficial.”
NERC CEO Jim Robb called the hybrid format the ERO’s “last major experiment in how to structure a board and MRC meeting” that seemed to be “a success so far.” He also praised the new office as a space for “more direct and … more intimate conversations” by the board and other stakeholders.
ERO to Issue First Level 3 Alert May 15
At the meeting, Darrell Moore, NERC’s director of bulk power system awareness, said the ERO needs the Level 3 alert in order “to understand how entities are taking steps to prepare for extreme cold weather conditions.”
Moore pointed out that the grid’s ability to withstand cold weather has been a major concern for the ERO and FERC over the past few years because of events such as the winter storms of 2021 and 2022. The commission recently approved new winter weather-focused reliability standards. (See FERC Orders New Reliability Standards in Response to Uri.)
Under the alert, responsible entities will be required to provide the following information by midnight ET Oct. 6:
for generator owners (GOs), their total net winter capacity megawatts, defined as the maximum output that generating equipment can supply to system load at the time of peak winter demand;
whether the entity has calculated an extreme cold weather temperature (ECWT) for some or all generating units;
the percent of net winter capacity megawatts capable of operating at the ECWT, along with the percent that have an ECWT above 32 degrees Fahrenheit and at various temperature ranges;
the percent of net winter capacity megawatts for which the GO has identified the generator cold weather critical component that could lead to forced derate or failure to start under freezing conditions;
whether any units experienced generator cold weather reliability events in the winter of 2022/23, and whether any units are believed to be at risk of the same event in the coming winter; and
for transmission operators and balancing authorities, whether they have updated their operating plans for cold weather emergencies, as described in the alert, or plan to before the next winter.
The alert also identifies eight “essential actions” for registered entities to take to prepare for cold weather. Unlike providing solicited information, implementing the essential actions is not mandatory. However, entities are required to acknowledge receipt of the alert and urged to follow the actions. After NERC receives entities’ responses, the ERO will analyze the results and report them to FERC by Nov. 3.
Board Approves INSM Data Request
The trustees also approved the issuance of a data request to responsible entities to help NERC meet FERC’s directive to develop a new standard requiring internal network security monitoring (INSM) on certain cyber systems.
At its January open meeting, the commission ordered NERC to submit new standards requiring INSM in all high-impact cyber systems, as well as in all medium-impact cyber systems with external routable connectivity (ERC). (See FERC Orders Internal Cyber Monitoring in Response to SolarWinds Hack.)
FERC also ordered the ERO to study the risks of not implementing INSM and the feasibility of requiring it for other cyber systems not subject to the proposed standards, like low- and medium-impact systems without ERC. The study must be submitted to the commission by Jan. 18.
NERC’s data request will seek information from entities regarding the number of substations and generation locations containing medium-impact cyber systems, with or without ERC; the number of locations with low-impact systems; potential logistical, technological or other challenges involved in extending INSM to additional cyber systems; and possible alternative actions to lessen these systems’ risks without INSM. Responses must be submitted within 60 days of the request’s issuance.
In addition, the board accepted the Texas Reliability Entity’s revised regional standards development process, which the RE’s Board of Directors approved in February. The revisions are intended to clarify the document and improve the efficiency of the standards development process; promote consistency with other RE materials and with NERC’s Standard Processes Manual; and promote stakeholder participation.
Leadership Changes; Thomas Honored
Robb announced the elevation of Howard Gugel, previously NERC’s vice president of engineering and standards, as the new vice president of compliance assurance and registration. While Gugel has been informally filling the role since February because of Mechelle Thomas’ long illness, he officially assumed it Thursday.
Thomas died May 1. She worked at NERC for nearly 11 years, initially as senior director of internal audit and corporate risk management and for the last four years in the compliance assurance position.
Robb led a moment of silence for her and was one of several during the meetings to pay tribute to her. While Robb discussed Thomas’ multiple accomplishments at NERC, such as launching the organization’s employee resource groups and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion within the organization, SERC Reliability CEO Jason Blake remembered her as “a true partner” to the REs who was “always involved with and collaborating” with RE staff.
MRC Chair Jennifer Flandermeyer on Wednesday called Thomas “a very special lady with a wide impact on the industry” and called her passing “a hard loss” for her colleagues.
“She was just a wonderful teammate; she was an adviser and a friend to me personally, and to … many of you,” Robb said. “She made an impact on people in both big and small ways, and we’re only starting to realize the magnitude of the shadow that she cast over the last couple of weeks. So to say that we’ve been devastated by this is an understatement.”
Soo Jin Kim, a 10-year veteran at NERC who most recently headed the organization’s Power Risk Issues and Strategic Management group, was approved to succeed Gugel as vice president of engineering and standards. Kim will begin her new role next week.
MISO has chosen LS Power’s Republic Transmission to build the first competitive project emerging from the RTO’s long-range transmission plan (LRTP).
In a selection report published Thursday, MISO said Republic’s $77 million proposal to construct the Hiple 345-kV line crossing the Indiana-Michigan border boasted a “well-supported project implementation cost estimate, a superior revenue requirement commitment and a well-reasoned routing strategy.”
The project is the first competitively bid project to come from MISO’s inaugural, $10 billion long-range transmission plan portfolio. The RTO originally estimated the project would cost about $254 million based on a 55-mile route, which Republic said it will reduce to 23 miles.
The project entails a new double-circuit 345-kV line that will connect Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s Hiple substation in LaGrange County, Ind., to Michigan Electric Transmission Co.’s (METC) future Duck Lake substation in Michigan.
MISO said it’s still uncertain where the Hiple line will connect with METC’s line on the state line and that its request for proposal required all proposed routes to cross the border “within 10 miles east or west of a point identified by METC as a possible point of interconnection.”
Only the Indiana portion of the transmission line was eligible for MISO’s competitive transmission process. However, Indiana this month expanded its state right of first refusal law to include multistate projects identified by RTOs in addition to projects necessary for reliability. (See New Law Expands Indiana ROFR Law for Transmission Buildout.)
MISO said Republic was careful to avoid environmentally protected areas in its proposed routing to the Michigan point of interconnection.
“Republic Transmission’s proposal reflects an efficient project cost and design,” Jeremiah Doner, MISO’s director of cost allocation and competitive transmission, said in a press release. “This includes a superior 40-year cost containment commitment and a well-reasoned project implementation strategy.”
In a press release, LS Power President Paul Thessen thanked MISO “for conducting a thorough competitive process to achieve cost efficient transmission solutions, which is estimated to provide consumers with more than 30% savings as compared to MISO’s initial estimate.”
The grid operator said it received six other proposals from two developers. Cost estimates for those proposals ranged from $97 million to $125 million and used either a 25- or 30-mile route. MISO does not reveal the identity of developers who do not win contracts.
The RTO gave Republic’s proposal an overall score of 93 out of 100; the other proposals ranked from 81 to 64. MISO opened the RFP last September and developers had until Jan. 11 to submit applications.
Republic said it will use a concrete or steel monopole design and pledged to complete the project two years ahead of MISO’s envisioned June 1, 2030, in-service date. MISO noted that, unlike the other two hopefuls, Republic is already cleared to operate as a public utility in Indiana and doesn’t have to seek approval from the state’s Utility Regulatory Commission to begin construction.
Other Project Decisions Loom
The Hiple RFP is the first of five RFPs stemming from MISO’s $10 billion, 18-project LRTP package of 345-kV lines approved in July.
MISO has two other RFP application windows open. Proposals are due May 19 for the $161 million Fairport-Denny project, crossing the Iowa-Missouri border. The RTO released another LRTP RFP in March, which seeks bids on the $556 million Denny to Zachary to Thomas Hill 345-kV project, part of which will link up with the Fairport-Denny project. (See MISO Begins LRTP’s 2nd RFP Process.)
MISO has said it will release two other RFPs in July. It plans to open bidding for the $12 million Deadend to Tremval 345-kV project in Wisconsin on July 11, followed by a July 24 opening of the bid window for a $23 million, 345-kV line segment from the Iowa-Illinois border to the Ipava substation in Illinois. The LRTP portfolio marks the first time MISO is simultaneously managing multiple competitive bid processes.
Only about 10% of the first LRTP portfolio is open to competitive bidding because of state ROFR laws and the upgrade nature of some of the projects. (See MISO Board Approves $10B in Long-range Tx Projects.) However, the Iowa Supreme Court in March temporarily invalidated the state’s ROFR law, throwing $2.64 billion worth of LRTP work across five Iowa projects assigned to incumbent developers into uncertainty. (See Iowa Regulators Ponder MISO Tx Projects After ROFR Ruling.)
Iowa staff are still working through the possible implications for transmission construction. The state’s Utilities Board replaced two of its three-member board on May 1. During a May 11 Organization of MISO States meeting, Iowa Board Member Joshua Byrnes told other MISO regulators that he was working feverishly to bring the new members up to speed on issues.
This isn’t the first time Republic has been awarded a MISO transmission project. The company and partner Big Rivers Electric completed the $65 million, 31-mile Duff-Coleman 345-kV transmission project in Southern Indiana and Western Kentucky ahead of schedule in 2020 after their bid was selected by MISO planners in 2016. Republic’s original $49.8 million proposal beat out 10 other developers’ bids. (See LS Power Unit Wins MISO’s First Competitive Project.) MISO originally placed a $59 million planning-level estimate on the work and estimates the project will provide $1 billion in benefits to its central region over the next two decades.
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on Friday approved the environmental assessment for New York City’s proposed congestion pricing plan, setting up the Big Apple to be the nation’s first city to implement a tolling program.
The city’s proposed Central Business District Tolling Program (CBDTP) would electronically charge motorists entering Manhattan below 60th Street, with the goal of both reducing city pollution and generating revenue to fund improvements to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). (See NYC Traffic Congestion Pricing Aims to Tackle Climate, Enflames Emotions.) Tolls would be placed on vehicles entering or staying in the city’s Central Business District, excluding main throughways like the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive or the Battery Park Underpass.
Daily vehicle entry into Manhattan | NYC DOT
The FHWA’s issuance of a Letter of Legal Sufficiency indicated that its environmental review found no significant impact on the surrounding metropolitan area. There will be a 30-day period for public comment on the EA before the city can move ahead.
Final congestion prices will be based on future recommendations from the six-person Traffic Mobility Review Board, but fares during peak traffic hours for passenger cars could be as high as $23 and $82 for trucks.
The MTA estimates that the CBDTP will generate up to $1 billion annually; significantly reduce traffic into Manhattan and city pollution by up to 12%; increase public transportation usage; save pedestrian lives by decreasing vehicle travel speeds; and not hurt disadvantaged communities, as residents making less than $60,000 would be exempt.
Although the CBDTP would be first of its kind in the U.S., similar efforts have been successfully implemented in cities around the world, such as Stockholm, London and Singapore.
Reaction Depends on Geography
The news was met with mixed reactions, based mostly on where in the metro area they came from.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy was among the most forceful voices disapproving of the decision.
“Today’s decision by the U.S. Department of Transportation to allow New York’s congestion pricing plan to move forward is unfair and ill advised” and “undercuts some of the [Biden] administration’s own long-term goals,” the governor said in a statement. He added that his administration is “closely assessing all legal options.”
U.S. Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), whose district covers Staten Island and South Brooklyn, and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), whose district covers the entire northern New Jersey-New York border, recently created the bipartisan Congressional Anti-Congestion Tax Caucus to combat the CBDTP.
Gottheimer said the caucus would “stand up for hardworking New Jersey and New York drivers who will soon face the MTA’s $23/day cash-grabbing congestion tax.” Malliotakis said “congestion pricing would shift vehicle traffic from higher-income, more urbanized areas to lower-income, more vulnerable communities.”
In a statement Friday, Gottheimer said, “The fight is just beginning.”
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), who represents parts of Long Island, also expressed discomfort with the news, tweeting that the “congestion plan is a tax on hardworking New Yorkers who commute into New York City” and is “the wrong decision.”
Meanwhile, multiple outlets quoted a spokesperson for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul as saying her administration “is committed to implementing congestion pricing to reduce traffic, improve air quality and support our public transit system.”
“The finding of legal sufficiency is a critical step that will allow our environmental assessment to be publicly available for anyone to read, and we will continue to work with our partners to move congestion pricing forward,” Hochul said.
New York Mayor Eric Adams also expressed support, tweeting that the CBDTP “is about more than reducing traffic” and will “invest in our transit system and clean up the air in the most polluted communities.”
In a statement to NetZero Insider, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso said, “So long as we do it right, congestion pricing will be a win-win-win for our economy, environment and people.”
Visualization of New York’s current unequal toll rates | Regional Plan Association
“Our next priority as we move forward with this landmark program is ensuring that we equalize tolls in a way that safeguards against toll-shopping and the overburdening of surrounding communities with traffic and pollution.”
Multiple Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives whose districts cover the city also support the plan, including Ritchie Torres (South Bronx), Jerry Nadler (central Manhattan) and Dan Goldman (Lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn).
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — On a March morning, a dozen of the estimated 200,000 new workers needed for New York’s energy transition inch their way up poles with no power lines at the top.
Down below, electric utility veterans coach their young charges through a learning process in which competence builds confidence.
Bore into the poles with power drills. Assemble the hardware. Rig a hoist for whatever is too heavy to carry up. Hang the cross-arms.
Look down — and get very comfortable with that view.
In a few years’ time, these trainees will be journeyman lineworkers, qualified to climb poles alone and reconnect wires sending thousands of volts of electricity to the community below them, an energy source intended to increasingly replace the use of fossil fuels for everyday functions such as driving, space heating and industrial processes.
But today, they work with exactly zero kilovolts. They won’t even get to the top of the poles.
“This is only their seventh day in school, so we really only go up about halfway,” one of the instructors tells a visitor.
And so it goes — a few people at a time, one day at a time, for years at a time.
At that pace, with unemployment low and the skilled trades already in high demand, assembling an army of workers to carry out the clean energy transition seems a daunting proposition.
The fact that it is happening in so many places at once helps.
Slow and Steady
The U.S. is expected to create millions of jobs if most aspects of everyday life are electrified and the means of generating that electricity transitions away from fossil fuels, as envisioned by many federal, state and local leaders.
The World Resources Institute projects that a transition to clean energy will translate into a net increase of 2.3 million U.S. jobs from 2020 to 2035, along with 5.7 million additional jobs if the country creates a robust domestic manufacturing sector to supply the transition.
New York has one of the most aggressive climate protection roadmaps in the country, and its Climate Action Council estimates the transition to clean energy resources will create up to 211,000 jobs through 2030 while eliminating 22,000 others.
By the time it hits its 2050 target date for carbon neutrality, New York expects to see 269,000 new positions in four primary sectors closely affected by the transition: electricity, fuels, buildings and transportation.
Many of those will not be highly skilled jobs, and some of the highly skilled jobs will not require skills specific to a particular type of clean energy. Nor will the transition happen all at once.
But given the number of skilled workers needed and the learning curve for the jobs, efforts already are underway to ramp up existing recruitment and training.
Career Ladder
During that morning in late March, one cluster of students was taking the first steps in a multiyear process to become fully qualified line workers at National Grid’s training facility in Schenectady.
Another cluster, already in their second year, was working to progress further along that career path, erecting a new pole a hundred yards away.
The little school has big neighbors that have had a prominent role in the design and manufacture of the power grid: General Electric’s original main factory campus and its world research headquarters each stand about two miles away in opposite directions.
The students and teachers at the National Grid facility are where the rubber meets the road, keeping power flowing to all the heat pumps and EV chargers being installed across New York.
Twice in March, the trainees and their mentors had mobilized to restore electricity to tens of thousands of customers as late-winter snowstorms socked the region.
More than five years of classroom training and field experience is mandated before a lineworker is fully qualified to work without supervision on lines carrying up to 69,000 volts.
The reason is simple: They need to get it exactly right.
In the least-bad scenario, a mistake can lead to a blackout. In the worst case, someone is injured or killed.
A second-year apprentice line worker replaces a pole at National Grid’s eastern New York training facility in Schenectady in March 2023. | NYPA
The school is run by a mix of National Grid managers, veterans of the trade working under contract and master electricians with IBEW Local 97.
One of the contract trainers is Bruce Selby, who retired after a long career as a National Grid lineman and now teaches a related course at a nearby community college.
The most frequent barrier for green trainees is not concern about potentially lethal voltages but fear of heights. Selby has several strategies to get the students up the pole and comfortable. One of them usually works.
“Everyone starts at the same level,” Selby said. “No one accelerates over another one. That builds a camaraderie — we all rise together. It’s all baby steps, so everyone gets comfortable at every level. And at every level we talk, so we ease our fears. I’ll climb right up there with them, because they’ll see, ‘If this old guy can do it, I can do it.’
“As we climb and they become proficient at it and competent, they become confident.”
He added: “Doesn’t work for everybody — some people mentally turn off at 10 feet.”
The frightened trainee may say they’re OK, but Selby can tell if they are not.
“How their body position is, that tells me a lot. If they’re going like this around the pole” — he bear-hugs an imaginary utility pole — “that’s a height thing. They’ll be real good, [then] 5, 6, 10 feet, all of the sudden we see that.”
One-on-one coaching can overcome that fear. If it does not, the trainee must find another specialty, but not necessarily another employer. National Grid will train them for other jobs.
Not one of the 35,500 miles of gas lines the utility maintains is up in the air, for example.
Evolving Needs
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has an apprenticeship program like those operated by National Grid and other utilities, with a gradual increase of qualifications built through classroom learning, lab training and supervised field work.
And NYPA too has a high washout rate due to fear of heights.
“It’s not for everybody. There’s no shame in not being able to go up 100 feet and lean back in a working strap,” said Bill Senior, a regional manager and senior vice president.
“That’s not a comfortable feeling.”
Management and union jointly decide if a trainee is not fit for the line job, Senior said.
Fortunately for those who do wash out, NYPA also needs people who will work with both feet on the ground, as a growing number of small-scale distributed clean energy resources supplement large central power plants.
New York Power Authority line worker Derrek Spencer, left, and apprentice line worker Spencer Beckwith replace an insulator on a NYPA line near Syracuse. | NYPA
“There’ll be some need for technicians because we are putting a lot of substations online,” Senior said. “In upstate New York, I see more need for electricians and electronic and relay techs to man these substations.”
NYPA Chief Operating Officer Joe Kessler said the nature of the energy transition is altering the planning and strategy utilities have traditionally used.
With their much smaller sizes and lower capacity factors, new renewable assets require much more planning, construction and maintenance than conventional generation, Kessler said.
The supply chain for material is more worrisome right now than the supply of potential employees, he said, but the competition for employees with certain skillsets is becoming keen.
Planning, analysis and compliance are areas of particular concern, as they underpin much of the energy transition.
“That competency is in short supply,” Kessler said. “Everybody’s competing against each other for that particular competency. We can’t be successful and Bill’s team can’t be successful unless those people are around to support them as well.”
Workforce Challenges
New York policy makers are aware of the need to find more people to do the work, and workforce development has been a central part of planning to implement the state’s landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019.
However, some complicating factors arise.
The U.S. labor force participation rate — the percentage of the working-age population that is working or actively seeking work — peaked at 67.3% in early 2000 and gradually declined to 63.3% by February 2020, on the eve of the pandemic, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.
In February 2023, it stood at 62.6% nationally but just 60.6% in New York.
Worse, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates New York’s population declined by 2.6% from 2020 to 2022 — or more than a half-million people, the most by number and percentage of any state. (The nation’s population grew an estimated 0.6% over the same period.)
As a result, New York’s February unemployment rate — the percentage of people not employed but actively seeking employment — was only 4.5% statewide, and well below 4% for large swaths of the state outside New York City.
In this environment, state officials planning the energy transition predict a net need in just seven years for 189,000 new workers for everything from erecting wind turbines and rewiring buildings to driving trucks between job sites and keeping track of the accounting for it all.
Essential to accomplishing this will be reaching out to the population of New Yorkers who are unemployed or underemployed. That dovetails neatly with a central theme in the state’s energy transition roadmap: Extending job training and apprenticeships to disadvantaged communities, where unemployment is higher and the jobs that do exist are often low-skill or low-wage.
Lifting Communities
NYPA has an assortment of workforce development tools, and its Environmental Justice Program specifically targets historically disadvantaged students for career exposure.
NYPA also is a founding sponsor of the Northland Workforce Training Center, where 60% of the nearly 900 students are non-white, roughly the same percentage as the population of Buffalo, where it is based.
There is a deliberate effort to recruit students of color, said Northland CEO Stephen Tucker, who noted that people of color are under-represented in the skilled trades and production work, and women even more so, “despite those careers offering family-sustaining wages and pathways to the middle class.”
“We’re located in east Buffalo; we’re right in the community. So our strategy is to have a very aggressive outreach and awareness campaign,” Tucker said.
“We have a team of people who go out to schools, the churches, the community centers, the various festivals. They’re raising awareness that these careers exist, because the majority of people don’t know that you can be an electrician and make $100,000 a year or eventually own your own business.”
New York Power Authority engineers, planners and trainees walk a NYPA transmission line near Utica. | NYPA
The staff is continually reminded of the challenges facing young adults in the surrounding communities — transportation, childcare, housing, mental health — and continually works to get them over those hurdles.
“We embed the delivery of intense wraparound services with the delivery of technical training,” Tucker said.
“We try to mitigate most of the traditional barriers that will keep people from enrolling in and completing post-secondary education. Because of that we’ve been able to achieve higher-than-average completion rates for community colleges.”
Northland occupies a repurposed circa-1911 machine-and-tool works in a neighborhood that is quintessentially Rust Belt — older middle-class housing stock on small lots surrounding former industrial sites. The crumbling Curtiss-Wright engine factory stands just a hundred yards from Northland, vacant since the 1990s.
But Northland is envisioned as a catalyst for change, a metaphoric full circle that is training young people for the high-tech blue-collar jobs of tomorrow amid the ruins of the blue-collar landscape of yesterday.
“They were in the DNA of Buffalo. But the factories closed, and the jobs dried up,” Tucker said. “This area was dormant for about 25 or 30 years.”
Graduates of Northland’s two-year Electrical Construction and Maintenance program are qualified for entry-level jobs or advanced training.
“They’ll be ready to enroll in an apprenticeship but not start at the beginning,” Tucker said. “They’ll have two years of education behind him. They could test into year two of an apprenticeship program. Or they could go right to work in industry or as a residential electrician.”
Next up for Northland is a curriculum to meet the needs of the energy transition.
“Moving forward, we are planning to launch a clean energy technology lab,” Tucker said, with training in battery storage, microgrid technology, renewable natural gas, EVs, EV chargers and building maintenance.
“We hope to have that deployed within the next year or so.”
Recruitment Strategy
Melanie Littlejohn, National Grid vice president of customer and community engagement, said the company cannot follow a one-size-fits-all strategy in recruiting for everyday operation — let alone for the energy transition. The utility’s three regions — upstate and downstate New York and Massachusetts — are only a few hours apart but different in many ways, from weather to terrain to economy.
“Our initial focus is really on how are we building awareness that these positions exist in the first place, and what are they, and how do you see your talents tied to them,” she said.
To build a workforce pipeline, the utility partners with an array of agencies, including high school vocational programs, two-year colleges, four-year colleges and educational opportunity centers.
New York’s two-year colleges design some of their career skills programs in partnership with industry, creating a clear path to employment.
“Junior colleges are so critically important to this part of this work,” Littlejohn said.
The lineworkers training in Schenectady are just one sliver of the utility’s personnel needs.
Littlejohn speaks of “the power behind the switch” — all the financial personnel, engineers, control room operators, analysts, and others who also keep the utility running, without ever climbing a pole.
Matthew Barnett, National Grid’s vice president of New York electric operations, said the utility cannot predict the numbers and skillsets it will need as the energy transition progresses, so it is running a series of five- and 10-year scenarios to have plans ready as the picture comes into clearer focus.
It is a more proactive stance to anticipated needs, as opposed to a reactive strategy based on existing needs.
The vast number of public, private and commercial EV chargers expected to be installed in the next decade is a perfect example.
“We’re looking at how do we need to build at the right pace to stay in front of the customer need, so we’re not the barrier,” Barnett said.
“This won’t all be done by hiring on National Grid personnel; we have contractor partnerships out there,” he said.
Making The Grade
The term “linemen” may sound archaic in the inclusive modern era, but almost all lineworkers are men.
Niagara Mohawk hired Patty Orr as apparently the first female line worker in the nation more than 40 years ago and its corporate successor, National Grid, has hired only about a half-dozen since.
Women are welcome and encouraged to apply, but not many do. It is a physically challenging job.
The tools for managing those demands have improved over the years and made the job safer, but a lineman still needs to be able to manipulate a 100-pound wire by hand while leaning out of a bucket or hanging from a harness.
Keith Kilgallon, senior instructor in Schenectady, said there are two places where most student dropouts happen: Right at the beginning, if they cannot deal with heights, and about two years in, when they start having to lift wires into position.
The handful of women who have come through the Schenectady school have done very well, he said. All but one possessed or developed the requisite confidence, strength and competence to graduate. But very few have applied.
There is a bit of mirth here and there at the training facility — the simulated city street where apprentice gas workers learn how to fix leaks and put out fires is named “Leak Lane.”
But the curriculum and instruction are as serious as the subject would suggest.
Kilgallon hoisted the door of an oversized garage to reveal a jungle of wires, transformers and switches right at eye level. There’s little elbow room and zero margin for error.
“We actually do energize this up to 5,000 volts,” he said. “If you close something that doesn’t phase out in the field, you’re going to cause an enormous outage. You have to synchronize the feeders together. So we can simulate how to synchronize the feeders in here, on primary voltage and secondary voltage.”
Students are forbidden to be inside without an instructor, or to outnumber the instructor by more than 5-1.
But with proper oversight, it is a great place to learn, Kilgallon said.
“I’ve only been here 20 years, and now we’re getting to be the old guys! I can remember going through climbing school; it seems like only yesterday. … It’s pretty much a mentoring program or an apprenticeship program, where somebody is really talking you and walking you through it,” he said.
On the opposite end of the career ladder is Landon Marks, three years out of high school. He enrolled in the Electrical Construction and Maintenance program at Hudson Valley Community College, then went to work for National Grid in November 2022.
For the first six months, Marks is a probationary employee and “helper,” authorized to control traffic, load trucks, watch and learn — but not to work with any live wires.
Marks is comfortable with heights, having completed climbing school at the college.
“So, I already have free-climbed and certified in all that before, but now that I’m a National Grid employee I have to do it again,” he said. “I’m not going to say I lacked fear when I started, but you get used to trusting your equipment.”
The fear of falling fades behind respect for electricity, a clarity of purpose and focus that comes with proximity to deadly voltages.
“You don’t even realize you’re on the pole anymore,” Marks said.
He quotes Selby, who was his instructor at the college as well: “Climbing is like the transportation to the job. The job’s at the top of the pole, the climbing shouldn’t be the job.”
Marks plans to make a career as a lineman, just like his father, Ronnie Marks, who still works for National Grid out of Troy.
Electricity looks like a growth field for decades to come, he said. “One hundred percent.”
WASHINGTON ― President Biden may not agree with all the provisions of Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) bill to accelerate permitting of energy and transmission projects, but he will support it “to start serious bipartisan negotiations in the Senate,” according to White House Senior Adviser John Podesta.
“The President doesn’t love everything in the bill, but we support it,” Podesta told a small audience Wednesday at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “That’s what compromise means, and it will take compromise by everybody to get this done.”
Podesta was acting as advance man for a new fact sheet from the White House outlining Biden’s top priorities for “permitting reform,” as the issue is commonly referred to. Describing current permitting delays and bottlenecks as “pervasive at every level of government,” Podesta said, “We got so good at stopping projects that we forgot how to build things in America.”
Permitting for projects he had worked on during the administration of former president Barack Obama had still not been approved when he returned to government last year, Podesta said. “That’s unacceptable.”
While highlighting administration actions — such as Tuesday’s release of proposals for designating National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors — deeper and more basic changes will require congressional action, he said. (See DOE Rolls out New Process for Designating Key Transmission Corridors.)
In his summary of top-line points in the fact sheet, Podesta put speeding up interconnection at the head of the list. A recent report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found more than 2,000 GW of wind, solar and storage sitting in interconnection queues across the country.
“We’ve got to get more clean energy capacity connected to the grid,” he said. “Legislation needs to expedite the connection of generation or storage that impacts more than one transmission system, and it needs to allow clean energy project developers to pay the cost of interconnection upfront.”
On interstate transmission, the administration wants permitting to be faster, more efficient and predictable. “A key part of this is allowing developers to allocate project costs to customers that benefit from the new transmission,” Podesta said.
To prevent power outages during extreme weather events, the administration wants to expand energy transfers between grid operators. Congress should give FERC the authority “to set a minimum level of transfer capability between regional grids — and should require the consideration of multiple benefits, including economic, operational, and environmental, when making transmission decisions,” he said.
In addition, “Congress should give FERC clear authority to issue permits for interstate transmission lines … and to include carbon dioxide and hydrogen infrastructure in designated energy corridors,” Podesta said.
Other priorities set out in the administration fact sheet include:
Improved permitting of clean energy projects on public lands through the use of programmatic environmental reviews, which cover specific areas or regions. Such reviews could “allow environmental review work to be re-used for multiple projects — by authorizing agencies to impose a fee on project sponsors to cover costs associated with a programmatic review upon which their project relies.” These reviews could then be used for up to five years or longer to expedite permitting of projects in the programmatic review area.
Expanded use of categorical exclusions for clean energy projects. About 95% of projects on federal land get these exclusions, meaning they do not require an environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Development of “an automated, joint electronic permit application for federal agencies,” along with “automated workflow tools that are compatible with existing agency dashboards” and can track a project’s progress from application to approval.
Improved community engagement. The White House wants federal agencies to each have a dedicated chief community engagement officer who will oversee engagement efforts across permitting processes. Agencies would also establish community engagement funds to help local and tribal entities who might not have the resources or expertise to engage in federal permitting processes. Fees from project developers could be used to contribute to these funds.
Modernized mining laws. The law governing mining on federal lands was signed in 1872 by President Ulysses S. Grant and has remained largely unchanged since then, Podesta said. While the administration has yet to develop detailed proposals, the fact sheet calls for reforms that “set a global standard for responsible mineral development and … increase coordination, transparency and communication between federal agencies, and provide greater certainty for project sponsors for responsible domestic mining and extraction.”
‘No More Climate Denial’
The administration’s focus on permitting appears strategically timed as Congress gears up for action on the issue. House Republicans have tied permitting reform to the increasingly tense debt ceiling negotiations, with the inclusion of their energy bill, H.R. 1, in the debt ceiling package they passed April 26. Permitting reform provisions in that bill were almost exclusively focused on streamlining permitting and removing other obstacles to the development of fossil fuel projects. (See GOP Energy Bill Passes House, Heads for Hostile Senate.)
Podesta slammed the debt ceiling bill, saying it be “would be catastrophic for our economy, our energy security and our national security. They are proposing to endanger the health of Americans [and] undo our clean energy progress as ransom for not triggering a catastrophic default,” he said.
Any chance for bipartisan action on permitting now lies in the Senate, where the issue is on the agendas of both the Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee, chaired by Manchin, and the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee.
At EPW’s recent hearing on permitting, both Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Ranking Member Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) called for a “regular order” of hearings and bipartisan negotiations on the issue. (See Permitting Delays, Inflation Put Double Whammy on IIJA and IRA.)
Manchin and ENR have a hearing on permitting on Thursday, when bills from both Manchin and Ranking Member Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) will likely be on the table.
Manchin has reintroduced the Building American Energy Security Act, which failed to gain a majority vote in the previous Congress, but continues to have Biden’s support. While Manchin and the White House have had a falling out over implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act’s electric vehicle tax credits, permitting may allow some rebuilding of the relationship, with Podesta praising the senator’s “leadership and commitment to this issue in particular.”
The bill sets a two-year limit on environmental impact reviews for major projects and one year for projects needing a lower-level environmental assessment. It also calls for the White House to identify a list of 25 high-priority energy infrastructure projects, to be updated periodically, and expedite permitting on them.
Similar to H.R. 1, Barrasso’s Spur Permitting of Underdeveloped Resources Act has a strong focus on promoting oil and gas leasing. The bill would require the Secretary of the Interior to immediately resume quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales and “offer no less than 25% of all nominated parcels in each field office at every quarterly sale.”
It also calls for no fewer than 11 offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Alaska over the next five years.
Capito’s permitting reform effort is the tongue-twisting Revitalizing the Economy by Simplifying Timelines and Assuring Regulatory Transparency Act, which is chiefly aimed at undercutting NEPA and the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. For example, it proposes a two-year time limit for environmental impact reviews under NEPA, but if the deadline is not met, a project would be considered to have met the requirements of the law.
By comparison, in Manchin’s bill, if an agency misses a permitting deadline, project developers could seek a court order “directing agencies to finish the review.”
With Republicans’ focus on fossil fuels and Biden’s on clean energy, common ground may be hard to find. Podesta sees possibilities for compromise on both sides’ proposals for limiting the time allowed for environmental reviews and other efforts to simplify the permitting process.
“There’s room for discussion on those core common elements,” he said. “But the one thing I think we’re going to insist on is no more climate denial; no more looking the other way. No more you can’t analyze the climate effects of a project. No more we need to ensure that we’re only looking at the cost benefits over a short period of time because if we look over the horizon, we might find that the world is changing a little faster than we thought.”
“Right now, we’re in the midst of a climate crisis, one that demands that we build, build, build clean energy,” Podesta said. “Here’s the bottom line: If we can’t build some new things in a few backyards, the climate crisis will destroy everyone’s backyards, along with the livelihoods, communities, wildlife and biodiversity we all want to protect.”
