Illustration: Tiffany Herring / Axios
House Republicans are advancing bills buttressing their argument that the race with China over AI and other issues requires more muscular oversight over what kinds of power should feed the electric grid.
Why it matters: House Energy and Commerce's markup Thursday of 13 energy bills sums up the GOP position on how to meet rising electricity demand from AI.
Zoom in: The committee approved Rep. Troy Balderson's Reliable Power Act, which would require coordination between FERC and any federal agency seeking to finalize a regulation that may cause power-grid shortfalls.
- The committee also advanced a Balderson bill that would allow grid operators to fast-track power projects that can quickly ramp up and down.
- "We should not be taking baseload power plants offline with sufficient and comparable replacements," E&C Chair Brett Guthrie said. "If AI models could run on just wind and solar power, they would be doing so already."
- The bill would "rightly place" FERC as "the federal authority on reliability to prevent a Clean Power Plan 3.0," Guthrie said, referring to Obama and Biden EPA rules limiting power plant emissions.
The other side: Rep. Kathy Castor, top Democrat on E&C's energy subcommittee, argued the energy package will raise energy prices to unfairly favor fossil fuels.
- "What they're really trying to do is grease the skids for dirty energy and try to let them jump the line and get out of jail free," Castor said. "And everything that does is make life more expensive for folks back home."
E&C approved another bill that would require state regulators to look at how reliable their energy supplies would be if utilities sold rising percentages of power generated from wind and solar.
- Those considerations could be applied to states' clean-energy standards and renewable portfolio standards mandating renewable use.
Context: Congress is pushing the bills as DOE wields emergency authority to require coal and gas plants to keep running.
Our thought bubble: Federal influence over the makeup of the power fleet faces limits, particularly from states.
What's next: "The goal is to put a pretty big energy package together," Balderson told Axios heading into the hearing. "That's what we will be advocating for.... We feel like this is a good start."
