Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Energy regulators allowed the country's largest regional power grid operator to speed review of some power plants in its backlog of proposed projects.
Why it matters: PJM Interconnection's program will show how grid operators plan to carry out President Trump's and congressional Republicans' desire to more quickly add more power generation to the grid to meet rising demand.
- The plan — which FERC approved Tuesday night — will provide clues on how grid operators define "dispatchable" power — generally assumed to be natural gas, nuclear, and coal and to exclude renewables like wind and solar.
Driving the news: PJM asked FERC to approve its Reliability Resource Initiative as a way to add up to 50 projects to be studied to connect to the grid to address near-term resource adequacy concerns.
- The operator — overseeing the flow of power in 13 mid-Atlantic states and D.C. — anticipates a 10-gigawatt gap in capacity in the 2030/31 delivery year that could swell to more than 20 gigawatts.
- PJM had more than 3,000 proposed projects totaling about 287 gigawatts in capacity at the end of 2023, according to the most recent DOE study.
Friction point: Renewable project developers and advocates argued that PJM's proposal ran afoul of the law.
- Norman Bay, a former FERC chairman, told the commission in November that the program "suffers from serious flaws that render it vulnerable to legal challenges."
- The decision will allow "PJM to fast-track gas projects over renewables," Charles Harper, senior power sector policy lead at Evergreen Action, said in a statement.
- "This 'solution' to put a thumb on the scale for fossil fuels does nothing to actually address the core problem — PJM's failure to interconnect new clean energy projects to provide affordable and reliable power for the regions' consumers," Harper said.
Between the lines: Any litigation would motivate lawmakers to advance the GRID Power Act, Timothy Fox of ClearView Energy Partners told Daniel.
- Fox also said: "We think renewable project developers and/or advocates may challenge the legality of the order to an appellate court," particularly as other grid operators in the Midwest and Great Plains may soon propose their own fast-track interconnection processes.
