Heinrich Calls For FERC Action That Would Lead To Lower Energy Costs And Improve Grid Reliability

WASHINGTON - On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) joined Chair Kathy Castor of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in sending a bicameral letter urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to accelerate the transition to clean energy by improving transmission planning, optimizing the cost allocation process, and unclogging interconnection queues.

“Our country is facing several challenges that require ambitious Federal policies to lower energy costs and provide economic security for American families and businesses,” the letter reads. “We have technologies we can deploy today to reduce household energy bills, improve reliability, create jobs, and cut harmful carbon pollution. We urge you to take next steps as expeditiously as possible to upgrade and expand our electric grid to enable power sharing across regions and the connection of more affordable and abundant renewable energy to power our homes, businesses, and vehicles at lower costs.”

The letter urges FERC to consider policies that include:

• Proactive planning of transmission lines to connect anticipated future generation with load;
• Ensuring that the multiple benefits of a proposed project (such as increasing reliability, resilience, efficiency, or meeting public policy goals) be considered, not just the primary benefit of a project;
• Ensuring that the cost allocation process accounts for the widespread benefits for consumers of expanded transmission;
• Streamlining inter-regional transmission planning with similar reforms.
• Eliminating disproportionate participant funding of network upgrades; and
• Planning network upgrades through the regional transmission planning and cost allocation process rather than through the serial interconnection process.

“As the ongoing European energy crisis demonstrates, there is no time to wait. We urgently need to shore up American energy independence and security by upgrading and expanding the electric grid. Doing so will place us on a firmer foundation to tackle the climate crisis, which grows increasingly dire with each year of delay. The April 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Working Group III report underscores that global greenhouse gas pollution must peak by 2025 and that we can halve global emissions by 2030,” the letter reads.

In addition to Senator Heinrich and Representative Castor, the letter was signed by U.S. Representatives Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Julia Brownley (D-Calif.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), Sean Casten (D-Ill.), Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.), and Mike Levin (D-Calif.), and U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.).

The full text of the letter is available here.