Illustration: Megan Robinson/Axios
Electric cooperatives' top lobbyist Jim Matheson thinks the incoming Trump administration will help utilities tackle rising power demand.
Why it matters: The co-ops are influential with Republicans from rural states. The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and its members could play a big role in swaying debates about permitting and EPA rules.
- The cooperatives provide power to 42 million people across 48 states.
Matheson, a former House Democrat from Utah, outlined the association's policy priorities in a letter last month to President-elect Trump. He took some time to elaborate to Axios on those priorities.
Power demand: Matheson said skyrocketing power demand driven by AI and new manufacturing only adds more urgency to the permitting negotiations that fell apart at the end of last year.
- "We've been beating this drum for a while, and what I'm excited about is, I think other people are getting it," he said. "Our discussions with the various landing teams in the incoming administration, they get it."
- One thing he argues will help: rolling back the Biden EPA's greenhouse gas rules for power plants.
- NRECA has sued EPA over the rules, and Matheson said the litigation "may address that issue before that regulatory process plays out."
Permitting: NRECA waded into the thorny debate over transmission last year to oppose a provision on Manchin-Barrasso that it thought would extend FERC jurisdiction over its members.
- Still, he said that bill offers a good baseline for the permitting debate headed into this year.
- "I think transmission does need to be part of it.… The fact that you had something come out of a committee in a bipartisan way is at least one indicator that there's some interest in this."
Reconciliation: Co-ops are focused on maintaining more than $10 billion established by the IRA for rural development: the New ERA program and PACE program, he said.
- NRECA members also support keeping the energy production and investment tax credits, which the IRA allowed public power utilities and rural co-ops to directly access for the first time.
- Matheson doesn't expect direct pay provisions to be a target in GOP reconciliation talks.
- But he's preparing to "talk about the importance of a level playing field for us to make investments in our community.… The for-profit sectors had all the benefit of that over the years, and we have not."
