SPP said Aug. 27 that Vice Chair Ray Hepper has been serving as the Board of Directors’ chair since Aug. 12.
Hepper replaced John Cupparo, who is stepping away from the position’s time commitments because of personal reasons, SPP said.
Cupparo was not present for the board’s August meeting, but did call in. He was elected to the board in 2022 and became chair in 2024. He plans to continue participating in the Strategic Planning and Corporate Governance committees and Interim Markets+ Independent Panel.
The RTO said it will announce a new vice chair before October.
Hepper has more than 30 years of experience in the electric utility industry. He served as ISO-NE’s general counsel until retiring in 2018. He also represented California in restructuring the billions of dollars’ worth of power contracts entered into during the 2000 energy crisis.
Hepper briefly served on ERCOT’s board in 2021. However, state law following that year’s Winter Storm Uri required that the ISO’s independent directors all reside in Texas.
Proposals that would negatively affect renewable energy far outnumbered supportive legislation introduced in state legislatures in the first half of 2025, Clean Tomorrow reports.
But of the 305 bills in 47 states tracked by the clean energy advocacy organization’s Siting Solutions Project, only 39 have been signed into law or are still pending — 10 of them permissive and seven restrictive.
Not surprisingly, the report flags a stark partisan divide among those making the proposals: Restrictive legislation proposed by Republicans outnumbered their permissive proposals by a 9-1 ratio. Democrats authored substantially fewer proposals, but their supportive measures outnumbered their restrictive measures by a 2-1 ratio.
Both parties proposed a similar number of bills judged likely to have a neutral or ambiguous effect, such as through small procedural or technical adjustments.
Notably, the small number of bipartisan proposals were more evenly split between restrictive, neutral and permissive. But 40% of them became law — twice the percentage of Democratic proposals and four times the percentage of Republican proposals enacted.
The greatest number of restrictive bills involved increasing the number and types of local approvals required for renewable energy proposals — a frequent rallying cry for home rule advocates and clean energy opponents, and a potential quagmire for developers.
Other common restrictive policy proposals entailed:
increasing local zoning authority;
expanding setback requirements;
imposing financial security mandates;
extended notification and hearing processes;
limits on siting on agricultural land; and
limits on development on public lands.
Solar, storage and wind development has been a divisive subject for years and became more polarizing as President Joe Biden guided a massive renewables funding package into law and President Donald Trump cranked up the anti-renewable rhetoric as part of his second-term pro-fossil energy dominance initiative.
Wind and solar had been the types of energy development most heavily supported by Democrats and Republicans alike surveyed in 2016 and remained the most favored by Democrats in 2025, Pew said. But wind and solar are now Republicans’ least-favored option, behind nuclear, offshore drilling, hydrofracking and coal mining.
Clean Tomorrow noted the importance of state-level policies in determining the future of the nation’s clean energy economy and said the 2026 legislative season will help clarify whether the flurry of restrictive proposals in 2025 is more than a temporary backlash.
The report predicts significant siting legislation will advance in Colorado, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia in 2026, and summarizes the issues.
It also breaks down specifics on 2025 developments in key states.
Other takeaways from the report include:
Restrictive legislation is most common in states that have had the largest wind and solar generation additions.
Opponents tried to repeal or weaken permissive siting reforms that several states had enacted in the past four years.
Texas, Illinois and New York led the nation in number of legislative proposals; restrictive measures outnumbered supportive measures by a wide margin in all three states, but New York saw a much larger percentage of neutral proposals than Texas or Illinois.
Siting and permitting reforms that are technology-agnostic fare better in states with at least one Republican legislative chamber but tend to be opposed by environmental advocates because they smooth the path for new natural gas infrastructure.
In 2025, Texas saw the nation’s greatest number of restrictive legislative proposals, some of which had the potential to eviscerate the renewable energy industry there. But only three of 32 measures became law, and they carried only modest changes.
With threat actors becoming more aggressive and sophisticated in their tactics, companies must be prepared for hard decisions after a data breach, a cybersecurity lawyer told attendees of a webinar hosted by the Texas Reliability Entity.
Speaking at Texas RE’s regular Talk with Texas RE event Aug. 26, Rebecca Jones, a partner at cybersecurity-focused law firm Mullen Coughlin, said over the past three years, the firm has seen a steady rise in the number of data breach incidents it handles — from just under 3,000 incidents in 2022 to more than 4,200 in 2024. In the first six months of this year Mullen Coughlin dealt with more than 2,100 incidents.
The most common type of event that Jones and her colleagues have dealt with since 2022 is a business email compromise. These attacks, constituting 34 to 38% of the firm’s business each year, involve malicious actors gaining control of an official company email and using it to trick real employees into sharing sensitive information or credentials.
Ransomware is the next most common incident type, with 23 to 26% of events handled each year. Jones said this style of attack has become more elaborate recently, with a growing incidence of what the firm calls “double extortion” — cases in which the threat actor encrypts a target’s files so that they are inaccessible until a ransom is received, while also copying the data to use for their own ends.
“Threat actors [are] increasingly becoming more aggressive with their victim companies and engaging in harassment tactics to get them to pay the demand, or at least to engage in negotiations,” Jones said. “That might look like a threat actor calling employees, calling the CEO, calling board members on their cell phones, letting people know that there has been an attack and … threatening to expose data publicly, on the dark web or on the regular internet.”
In any incident, Jones said victims need to be ready to protect their interests; the incident response team is “really the meat and potatoes of the firm,” accounting for most of the attorneys there. She presented a potential “road map” for such a scenario, outlining steps the firm’s clients have taken from the beginning to the end of the process.
The map starts with the detection of a compromise, followed by mobilizing the victim’s incident response team and following its process for restoration of data if necessary. An outside forensics team may be engaged to investigate the cause of the incident.
While the forensic investigator may also be tasked with negotiating with the attackers themselves, Jones said companies often prefer to hire a separate negotiating team with experience in such incidents. Although many companies end up paying the ransom to recover their systems, a good negotiator can usually bargain a payment down from an initial extreme figure to one that is more manageable, she explained.
The firm will usually recommend that victims hire a public relations firm as well, ensuring that their communication is accurate and does not trigger unnecessary obligations. Companies must comply with the legal disclosure requirements, Jones emphasized, but they should also be aware of the impact that their public messaging has.
“We don’t use the term ‘breach’ if we can avoid it … because it’s something that people will say without knowing what it means,” Jones said. “A breach means that there was unauthorized access or acquisition of legally protected information, and you have to notify individuals and probably regulators. Saying that you have a breach can imply that you have all of these obligations, so it’s not something that you would want to use at the outset of an incident when you may not even have a breach.”
MISO announced that its first interconnection queue express lane application window turned up 47 projects at a little more than 26.5 GW of proposed new capacity, with natural gas generation accounting for about 20 GW.
The grid operator said projects are spread across 12 states and include 74% natural gas, 15% battery storage, 4% wind, 4% solar and 3% nuclear power. MISO’s interconnection fast lane is meant to maintain resource adequacy and was approved by FERC in July. (See FERC Approves MISO Interconnection Queue Fast Lane.)
Despite the apparent dominance of natural gas across 22 project requests, MISO leadership said the applicant pool represented a “large, diverse” assortment.
“This broad mix underscores MISO’s evolving energy landscape and the urgent need to bring new resources online to address growing reliability challenges,” MISO Vice President of System Planning Aubrey Johnson said in a press release. “These projects are designed to meet localized and accelerating demand growth.”
MISO’s temporary fast lane process is designed to study up to 10 projects per quarter. MISO will discontinue the special study process after it processes a maximum of 68 projects, with the program due to sunset no later than Aug. 31, 2027. MISO said some projects on the first list may have to be shifted to future study cycles.
MISO said it’s evaluating the applications for completeness and will publish an approved list of projects that will proceed to study sometime after Sept. 2. Projects must show they will help serve “clear resource adequacy or reliability need,” according to MISO, and must have verification from relevant regulatory authorities. Projects also need to be commercially operable within three to six years.
“These projects must meet strict requirements to ensure that only viable, needed projects are considered,” Johnson said.
MISO accepted the interconnection requests Aug. 6-11 as part of its first study cycle and has said eligible projects will be studied on a first-come, first-served basis.
Critics of the process said it would give thermal resources preferential treatment over renewable energy and favor load-serving entities’ projects while discriminating against independent power producers. (See MISO’s Queue Fast Lane, Take 2, Nets Déjà vu Arguments.)
MISO declined to comment on what share of the generation proposals originated from independent power producers versus load-serving entities. It also refused to say whether it expected the majority gas proposals. Spokesperson Brandon Morris said MISO had nothing further to add at this time.
Wisconsin, which has a goal to achieve 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050, followed with four requests for gas plants. Indiana and Iowa followed with three requests apiece.
Environmental nonprofits and clean energy groups have sought a rehearing of FERC’s decision to approve the expedited interconnection process. Clean Wisconsin, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Sustainable FERC Project have banded together to file one rehearing request, while the American Clean Power Association, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the Southern Renewable Energy Association and Clean Grid Alliance have joined forces on another. Both rehearing requests, filed Aug. 20, again allege the process is discriminatory and challenge the notion that MISO faces imminent resource adequacy deficiencies that justify a queue fast track.
“This is a predictable and devastating outcome for the 200 GW of clean, affordable energy that are being punished for playing by the rules,” Sierra Club senior campaign adviser Jessi Eidbo said in a statement to RTO Insider. Eidbo was referring to existing renewable energy and clean generation in MISO’s approximately 300 GW normal interconnection queue.
“Millions of people served by utilities in the central United States will see unnecessarily higher monthly electric bills because MISO and Trump are needlessly dismantling the clean energy economy,” Eidbo said.
PJM’s Nominating Committee has named two candidates to fill vacant seats on the RTO’s Board of Managers: Robert Ethier, former ISO-NE executive, and Le Xie, faculty co-director of the Power and AI Initiative at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The RTO’s Members Committee (MC) will vote on the two candidates during its Sept. 25 meeting. Ethier and Xie would be filling board positions left open after PJM stakeholders declined to re-elect two members during the May Annual Meeting. (See PJM Stakeholders Reaffirm Board Election Results.)
During his time at ISO-NE, Ethier filled three vice president positions — system planning, market operations and market development — between 2008 and 2024 and is now a principal at Stickney Brook Consulting, based in Florence, Mass.
In a June 2024 announcement of Ethier’s retirement from the New England grid operator, ISO-NE President Gordon van Welie said, “Bob possesses a wide breadth of knowledge coupled with deep understanding of many aspects of the incredibly complex system we manage.”
Xie has served as a professor at Harvard since 2024, before which he taught at Texas A&M University starting in 2010 and held previous roles at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a fellow and distinguished lecturer at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has served as an editor for the group’s Transactions on Power Systems journal.
Le Xie | Harvard John A. Paulson School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences
In an announcement of the selection, Nominating Committee Chair Jeanine Johnson recognized the widespread interest in PJM’s leadership. Nine state governors wrote to the Board of Managers in a July 16 letter requesting a formal, permanent role for member states in selecting two seats on the nine-member board. Virginia Energy Director Glenn Davis attended the July 23 MC meeting, along with a delegation from other states, calling for a new vision of how PJM and the states interact.
“The Nominating Committee is confident that Bob and Le will make significant contributions as PJM board members,” Johnson wrote. “The Nominating Committee would like to acknowledge the interest of the PJM states in the activity of the Nominating Committee and appreciates the proposal of candidates. The Nominating Committee considered the proposed candidates, followed its process and code of conduct, and selected nominees best aligned with the position description adopted by the committee.”
“As governors from different parties, we have points of disagreement on energy policy, but we are united by the need to get PJM back on track to fixing the problems we collectively face,” the two governors wrote. “By working together with a diverse, bipartisan coalition of governors, we are committed to solving these collective problems and to ensuring that the citizens of our states and the region receive the affordable, reliable power that they deserve.”
FERC granted PJM a waiver of the requirement that it take no more than one month to bring board candidates before the MC following a vacancy, a move the RTO argued was necessary to “ensure sufficient time to identify potential board members and to complete appropriate due diligence, including background checks, prior to announcing the proposed nominees to be considered and voted on by the Members Committee.” (See PJM Files Waiver Seeking Additional Time to Select Board Candidates.)
A new campaign from Green America seeks to raise awareness of the impact on the environment from the rush to build data centers for artificial intelligence, calling on tech companies to use 100% renewable energy.
The “Dirty Data: Stop Big AI From Polluting Our Climate & Communities” campaign also will push companies to listen to neighbors near data centers and related power plants about exposure to air pollution and related health conditions. Data centers already use electricity to power the equivalent of 7 million American homes and have contributed to higher power prices.
“There is a lot of excitement about artificial intelligence and its potential to make all our lives better,” Green America’s Director for Climate Campaigns Dan Howells said in a statement. “But for all the benefits, AI comes with a big environmental cost. So, the choices companies like Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft make are critical. They could choose a new clean energy future and not return to a dangerous and dirty energy past. In order for the AI revolution to really be intelligent, it must be powered by renewables.”
Demand is predicted to rise to between 165 and 326 TWh per year by 2028, which is enough to power 22% of U.S. households and could generate emissions the equivalent of driving a car 300 billion miles, or 1,600 round trips between the Sun and the Earth.
The biggest tech firms have seen emissions rise this decade, growing on average 150% between 2020 and 2023 with 182% growth at Amazon, 155% for Microsoft, 145% for Meta and 138% for Google. All four tech firms made major climate commitments and pledged to get to net zero, but the growth in data center demand is threatening their ability to meet them.
Amazon denied its emissions had risen that much, saying in a statement that its carbon intensity has declined regularly in recent years. Its absolute emissions have gone up, with its 2024 sustainability report saying direct emissions were up 6% from 2023, and indirect emissions from power purchases were up 1% on the year, in part due to higher electricity usage required to support advanced technologies.
Amazon reported that indirect emissions from other sources (such as work contracted for the firm) was up 6% from 2023 and was the largest share of its emissions at 74% of the total. The increase there was due to data center construction and fuel consumption from third party shippers, the sustainability report said.
Other industries that rely on data centers have seen emissions decline, with telecom seeing a drop to 94% of 2020 levels by 2023.
The rising demand from data centers is driving utilities to keep coal power plants open that were slated to retire. But a go-to source of energy is natural gas, with plans for 20 GW of new facilities in the American South to serve tech companies.
Another option is nuclear power, with Microsoft helping to reopen an old Three Mile Island plant and a deal with Meta to help expand the Clinton plant in Illinois. Google and Amazon also are investing in small modular reactors.
Green America said its campaign is intended to mobilize its members and others to ensure AI becomes a force for climate solutions. That includes siting them responsibly; boosting efficiency in their operations, including with more efficient microchips; and running their operations on clean, renewable energy.
The campaign also calls for more transparency, so that planned use of electricity and water to run new hyperscale data centers is better known. The sector needs to be honest about the scope of their impacts in order to be good neighbors and take responsibility for the pollution produced, Green America said.
A new analysis details some of the job growth and employment demographics connected to the proliferation of renewable energy in recent years.
It is based on data that predates the second term of President Donald Trump, and his attempts to rapidly reconfigure the energy industry. The pattern highlighted by the authors — that the renewables workforce varies significantly between regions — is likely to remain relevant, but the observation that the wind and solar workforce is growing as a percentage of the energy workforce may change.
The analysis was performed by one former and two current staff members at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which announced the results Aug. 26 with the caveat that the views expressed are the authors’ and not attributable to the Federal Reserve System or its Dallas branch.
Wind and solar account for the majority of renewable energy jobs in most states, the authors write, but the percentage of each can differ sharply from one state to the next.
Nevada is at one end of the scale, with solar accounting for 87% of the renewable energy workforce and wind just 2% — the largest and smallest percentages in any of the contiguous 48 states.
North Dakota is at the opposite end, with solar accounting for 14% and wind 77% — the smallest and largest percentages within the Lower 48.
The reasons are straightforward: Nevada has few wind turbines and North Dakota has little commercial solar capacity.
The authors note, however, that while wind and hydropower energy development (and jobs) tend to happen where there is strong, steady wind or where large amounts of water flow over suitable topography, photovoltaic projects are not as clearly correlated to the strongest solar irradiance.
State-level factors such as tax credits and energy standards produce pockets of solar development where sunlight is not necessarily strongest.
Some of these employment trends are likely in line for changes.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported Aug. 20 that solar, storage and wind development already in the pipeline is expected to boost overall energy development to a new annual record in 2025. (See U.S. Could Gain 33 GW of Solar, 18 GW of Storage in 2025.)
But BloombergNEF reported Aug. 26 that new renewable energy investment announced in the U.S. in the first half of 2025 dropped $20.5 billion or 36% from the same period in 2024, due to the Trump administration’s energy policy changes and tariff threats.
The employment report was written by Garrett Golding, an assistant vice president for energy programs at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; Xiaohan Zhang, a senior research economist; and Claire Jeffress, formerly a research analyst there.
They note the importance of accurate employment statistics in targeting workforce development efforts for what is expected to be a period of strong growth for multiple sectors in the energy industry: “Though employment in these sectors is growing faster than the rest of the labor force, the number of qualified workers hasn’t kept pace.”
But they also note the potential pitfalls in trying to compile such data.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, counted just 8,000 wind industry jobs nationwide in 2022, while the U.S. Department of Energy tallied 125,000.
This is because the BLS industry classification system predates wide use of wind and solar generation; there are nuances within the jobs themselves that can lead to misclassification; and DOE includes jobs in industries closely related to power generation, but BLS does not.
PJM’s Markets and Reliability Committee endorsed by acclamation a PJM proposal to rework how it determines whether a new generation point-of-interconnection (POI) falls under federal jurisdiction — and therefore under the RTO’s purview — or state oversight. (See “Stakeholders Endorse POI Jurisdiction Changes,” PJM PC/TEAC Briefs: July 8, 2025.)
The changes would establish a “bright-line” test where a POI of 69 kV or higher would fall under FERC jurisdiction, while lower-voltage facilities would be delegated to the states. A backstop provision could override that determination if the cost-recovery methodology approved by FERC, the transmission owner or relevant electric retail regulatory authority (RERRA) has classified the POI as either transmission or distribution. The existing “first-use” test considers the first wholesale resource to interconnect at a distribution asset as falling under state or local jurisdiction, with all subsequent interconnections being federal.
PJM associate general counsel Thomas DeVita said resources interconnecting with distribution-level facilities tend to be simpler in nature and better lend themselves to a wholesale market participation agreement (WMPA) compared with a more complex generation interconnection agreement (GIA). Placing more resources on the path to receiving a WMPA would free up interconnection staff to focus on more demanding applications. The RTO has estimated that around 12 to 15% of interconnections approved since the introduction of the WMPA pathway would have been affected by the proposal if it had been implemented at that time.
DeVita said PJM is aiming to file the changes with FERC in October, followed by implementation in spring 2026.
1st Read on Expanded Provisional Interconnection Service
PJM Director of Interconnection Planning Donnie Bielak presented a first read on a proposal to allow more flexibility around when new resources can begin operating while network upgrades are being completed. The proposal is set to be voted on by the Planning Committee on Sept. 9, followed by the MRC on Sept. 25.
The change would allow interim deliverability studies to determine that a resource is capable of partial operations and receive provisional interconnection service. The studies currently only look at whether a resource can reach its full output without causing transmission violations and prohibit them from coming into service if issues are identified. When provisional interconnection service is granted for a resource capable of partial operations, an operational guide would be produced for dispatchers to understand conditions under which the unit could be dispatched.
The revisions to Manual 14H: New Service Requests Cycle Process would allow resources to operate as energy-only for a specific delivery year, with their output determined by the interim deliverability study. They would not receive capacity interconnection rights (CIRs) or a capacity commitment for that delivery year. Bielak said the proposal is intended to allow resources to enter service faster and make more energy potential available for dispatchers as load growth is expected to continue to eat away at the reserve margin.
Independent Market Monitor Joe Bowring said the plan seems like an excellent idea to improve an interconnection process that has long been criticized as being backlogged.
Stakeholders requested there be more transparency on resources that would receive provisional interconnection service to ensure a level playing field on hedging.
Exelon’s Amber Thomas said there needs to be more information about the study cases PJM plans to use on this to ensure the RTO does not assume network upgrades will be complete in time for a unit to achieve partial operations, only to find that transmission will not be completed on time. Bielak responded that the cases would only include upgrades set to be complete by the delivery year in which the unit would begin provisional operations.
Market Design Project Road Map
PJM presented a “refresh” of its Market Design Project Road Map to include several new stakeholder efforts, including a Critical Issue Fast Path (CIFP) process the board initiated in August addressing large load growth and exploring a sub-annual capacity market. Executive Director of Market Design Rebecca Carroll said the RTO’s goal is to update the road map twice a year to ensure that all stakeholders are aware of what the market design team is focused on.
Much of the road map centers on addressing a tightening balance between supply and demand as load growth runs up against resource deactivations and lagging new entry. PJM presented a conceptual proposal to create a non-capacity-backed load (NCBL) service that could be triggered as a reliability backstop.
Once initiated, new large loads could elect or be assigned to accept interconnection service without a corresponding capacity obligation, reducing the amount of load participating in a particular Base Residual Auction (BRA) and allowing the large load to avoid capacity charges. The first stage of the CIFP process is to begin Sept. 2, with the final meeting scheduled for Nov. 19 and a FERC filing targeted for December. (See PJM Board Initiates CIFP Addressing RA, Large Loads.)
The MRC voted in July to endorse an issue charge brought by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro calling on PJM to hire a consultant to draft a report exploring the possible benefits and drawbacks of implementing a sub-annual capacity market design. Supporters argued that a more granular market could allow capacity auctions to be more tailored to the risks inherent in each season or interval. The issue charge anticipates the report will be completed by December, after which the road map includes a “capacity market reforms” item including further exploring a sub-annual or prompt auction design between early 2026 and halfway through 2027. (See PJM Stakeholders Support Sub-annual Capacity Issue Charge.)
Ongoing efforts to revise PJM’s effective load-carrying capability (ELCC) accreditation and risk modeling paradigm, a pro forma reliability-must-run (RMR) agreement and the Quadrennial Review of parameters for the 2028/29 BRA are all set to continue through the second quarter of 2026.
Additional efforts on the energy and ancillary service markets include evaluating how resources with advance commitments fit into the day-ahead energy market, renewable dispatch, load flexibility and reserve certainty. The road map also includes work on energy storage modeling beginning in 2026 and “additional essential reliability service products” starting in 2027.
The PJM Board of Managers letter outlining the CIFP process envisions faster interconnection studies and capacity market changes to boost resource adequacy.
LS Power’s Dan Pierpont said it’s important that PJM is willing to discuss how each of the work items might interact with each other. In particular, he said the market parameters defined by the Quadrennial Review could be impacted by market changes arising from the CIFP process focused on large load additions.
PJM Exploring Refiling CIR Transfer Proposal
PJM is drafting changes to its proposal to expand the process for transferring CIRs from a deactivating resource in the wake of a FERC rejection (ER25-1128). The commission faulted the proposal’s inclusion of an indefinite extension of the replacement resource’s in-service date, finding that it could lead to withholding of transmission access. (See PJM Stakeholders Endorse Coalition Proposal on CIR Transfers.)
“We find that PJM’s lack of a maximum time limit for the one-time option for an extension of a Replacement Generator Resource’s Commercial Operation Date regardless of cause renders PJM’s proposal unjust and unreasonable because it undermines the purpose of the generator replacement process,” the commission wrote in its order. “That is, the main purpose of the generator replacement process is to avoid duplicative study costs and operational costs that otherwise would occur when the request to replace an existing generating facility must proceed through the interconnection study queue process, which will in turn avoid delaying the replacement of older resources with more efficient and cost-effective resources.”
Bielak said staff is planning to bring a proposal to the Sept. 9 Planning Committee meeting alongside any stakeholder alternatives. An endorsement vote is anticipated at the Sept. 25 Members Committee meeting.
NRDC advocate Claire Lang-Ree encouraged PJM to consider also the ambiguous language around the in-service requirements for resource types with long development timelines, an issue about which the commission recommended PJM include more information. While it was not included as a rationale for rejecting the filing, the commission wrote that exempting resources with “industry-recognized significant construction timelines” from the three-year commercial operation date requirement lacks clarity.
“We also agree with PJM’s goal of offering Replacement Generation Resources that face long lead times a certain degree of flexibility with respect to achieving commercial operation, and agree that such resources ‘can make a significant contribution to meeting resource adequacy needs, at a time when PJM needs additional resources to maintain reliability,’” the commission wrote.
The MRC endorsed by acclamation a proposal to add a creditworthiness review before capacity market participants are offered Reliability Pricing Model (RPM) seller credits — unsecured credit available to satisfy BRA participation requirements. The credit available amounts to twice the average total net monthly bills over the prior year, up to the $50 million unsecured credit allowance cap.
Senior Director of Credit Risk and Collateral Management Gwen Kelly said the proposal is consistent with credit evaluation required in other instances where PJM offers credit and would not change the credit calculation or limit. The changes are set to be voted on by the MC on Sept. 25.
PJM Reviews Proposal on Regulation Resources at NEM Sites
PJM’s Pete Langbein presented a first read on a proposal to allow demand response resources seeking to offer regulation-only service to participate in the market at sites where there is the capability for energy injections. It would allow a DR customer to offer regulation when there is no load or a net injection at its POI if they have received authorization from the relevant electric distribution company (EDC) and it’s reflected in a net energy metering (NEM) agreement. (See “Stakeholders Endorse Changes to Storage Participation in Regulation Market,” PJM MIC Briefs: July 9, 2025.)
The change is part of PJM’s planned implementation of the distributed energy resource (DER) requirements in FERC Order 2222 and scheduled to be rolled out in 2029.
Market Monitor Joe Bowring stated that the proposal is a one-off proposal that represents special treatment for a specific stakeholder and should not be an exception to the broader process that had been approved by FERC for implementation in 2029 for all market participants.
Members Committee
PJM Seeks to Codify Process for Filling Committee Chair, Vice Chair Vacancies
PJM’s Michele Greening presented a first read on revisions to Manual 34 to establish a process for filling a temporary vacancy in the MC chair or vice chair position.
Under the proposal, if the chair takes a temporary leave, the vice chair would fill in and the most recently elected chair to have finished their term would cover the vice chair position. If that individual is unavailable, a past chair can be selected to fill the vice chair position. A similar process would be used to cover a temporarily absent vice chair. The revisions also include a statement that candidates for either position “should have a reasonable expectation that they will be able to serve a complete term.”
The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is calling for comments on a draft guide to help federal agencies generate or request a software bill of materials (SBOM) for their products.
SBOMs are formal records of each component used in building a software application, including its developer and supply chain. Modern applications are usually not individually coded from the ground up but built in large part from bits of code available in public or private repositories, which are often copied and pasted into developers’ projects with few changes.
This means that if one of these bits of code contains a vulnerability, it can spread quickly to customers throughout the world. This happened with Log4j, an open-source software library from Apache present in software used by companies in a wide range of industries. In December 2021, researchers discovered a weakness in the code that could be used by remote actors to take control of affected systems.
An SBOM helps to mitigate this issue by giving customers a quick, machine-readable reference for the provenance of various components. The NTIA’s guidance in 2021 “defined expectations for SBOM implementation,” CISA said in the introduction to its guidance, but with advancements in the “SBOM state of art” since then, the agency released the new document to update “baseline data fields, practices and processes for SBOMs generated or requested by U.S. agencies.”
3 Categories for Elements
Like the earlier document, CISA’s guidance separates the minimum elements into three categories: data fields, automation support and practices and processes. This organization is meant to “support an evolving approach to software transparency by capturing both the technology and the functional operation.”
Data fields provide baseline information about each component of the software application, including the developer, the component’s name, its version number, a timestamp of the most recent update to the SBOM data, any licenses under which it is made available and its relationships with other components. Some of these elements are updated from the NTIA guide for improved clarity, while others, such as the license, are new to CISA’s document.
Automation support means ensuring that the SBOM can be read as widely as possible through standardized file formats. CISA acknowledged that the decision about which format to use can vary based on factors specific to each organization and encouraged agencies to “accept any widely used, interoperable and machine-processable SBOM format,” though it also suggested readers not accept SBOMs in deprecated versions of any format in order to maintain the widest compatibility.
Elements of SBOM practices and processes include ensuring that a new SBOM is generated with each new build or release of a software application, listing all known software dependencies and identifying areas where information is incomplete, making SBOMs available promptly to those who need them and accommodating updates, including corrections to SBOM data.
The draft also provided further areas for consideration as SBOMs and their tooling continue to mature: SBOMs in cloud environments and artificial intelligence systems, validation methods for SBOM formats and correlating SBOMs with industry security advisories. CISA said continued discussion of these and other emerging issues can help ensure that the minimum elements and best practices keep up with the changing pace of industry evolution.
“[An] SBOM is a valuable tool that helps software manufacturers with addressing supply chain risks, and several best practices have evolved significantly in recent years,” Chris Butera, CISA acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement. “This voluntary guidance will empower federal agencies and other organizations to make risk-informed decisions, strengthen their cybersecurity posture and support scalable, machine-readable solutions.”
CISA is accepting feedback through the Federal Register. The agency said comments will be used to refine the document ahead of the final draft.
Public Service Company of New Mexico will provide $175 million in benefits to customers and the state as part of Blackstone Infrastructure’s acquisition of PNM’s parent company, TXNM Energy, according to an Aug. 25 regulatory filing.
The benefit package includes a $105 million acquisition rate credit, which would be the largest in state history, according to PNM’s filing with the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC). The credit would be paid to PNM customers over four years and would lower the average residential customer bill by 3.5%.
The filing includes a $25 million commitment to speed progress toward the state’s energy transition goals, including funding for new technologies.
Another $35 million would be used for economic development programs, such as job training in the utility industry. And $10 million, to be paid over 10 years, would go to the PNM Good Neighbor Fund for low-income customers.
By infusing funds into PNM, the acquisition would help it to thrive “in a rapidly changing energy environment,” PNM and Blackstone said in a press release.
“This transaction keeps PNM rooted in New Mexico while giving it the financial strength to transform our grid and harness the opportunities to benefit our customers and communities for decades to come,” PNM CEO Don Tarry said in a statement.
$11.5B Acquisition
TXNM Energy and Blackstone Infrastructure announced the proposed acquisition in May. In addition to PNM, TXNM owns Texas New Mexico Power, a transmission and distribution utility in Texas that serves about 280,000 customers.
Under terms of the $11.5 billion deal, Blackstone would pay $61.25/share in cash upon closing. The purchase would be funded through equity and assumption of existing debt.
The agreement, which is subject to regulatory approvals, is expected to close in the second half of 2026. TXNM shareholders will meet Aug. 28 to vote on the deal.
On Aug. 25, TXNM Energy filed applications for approval of the proposed acquisition with the New Mexico PRC, Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and FERC.
The filing with the PUCT details $50 million in benefits, including a $35 million rate credit paid over four years, $10 million in economic development over 10 years and $5 million in additional community support.
The FERC filing states that the acquisition would not raise rates charged to either wholesale power sales or transmission service customers.
FERC and the PUCT each have 180 days to consider the application. The New Mexico PRC doesn’t have any deadlines for its review, but TXNM expects the process to take about a year.
No Layoffs Planned
According to PNM’s filing with the PRC, PNM customers won’t pay any costs incurred by PNM or its affiliates related to the acquisition. PNM will remain under PRC jurisdiction, and PNM and TXNM headquarters will remain in New Mexico.
PNM said it won’t lay off employees or cut pay for at least three years after the deal closes. Blackstone Infrastructure has promised to hold TXNM Energy for at least 10 years.
In June, Blackstone Infrastructure completed the purchase of 8 million newly issued shares of TXNM Energy common stock at $50/share, for a total of $400 million, through a private placement agreement.
PNM previously had planned to be acquired by Avangrid. But after final approval for the deal got bogged down at the New Mexico Supreme Court, and the deadline to close the transaction was extended multiple times, Avangrid pulled out of the agreement in January 2024. (See Lights out for Avangrid’s PNM Acquisition.)
