PoliticoPro: Make it or break it on permitting reform
By Alex Guillén and Finya Swai
ME FIRST — DEMS FLOAT TRANSMISSION ASKS: A group of Senate Energy Committee Democrats are circulating a draft bill to facilitate the buildout of new transmission lines to combat electricity price hikes and meet the rising power demand from AI data centers. The proposal, obtained exclusively by Pro’s Josh Siegel, is led by Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and also includes Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Angus King (I-Maine), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.).
It represents a bid by Democrats to lay out their priorities to inform negotiations occurring between Senate committee leaders on a broader permitting reform overhaul. It contains similar provisions to the transmission title of a bill proposed last Congress by now retired-Senate Energy Committee Chair Joe Manchin and Sen. John Barrasso, the panel’s top Republican at the time, called the Energy Permitting Reform Act, or EPRA.
It comes as Energy Committee Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) and ranking member Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) are holding a hearing today on ways to bolster the power grid, a signal of bipartisan interest in a key element of permitting talks.
The new proposal from committee Democrats would give FERC more authority to approve, plan, and coordinate transmission lines. It tasks the commission with creating a cost allocation model that would require customers to pay only if they benefit from a given transmission line, and writing a rule to expedite the interconnection approval process by using advanced computing and automation.
It also requires DOE and Federal Power Marketing Administrations to engage in public-private partnerships to deploy grid enhancing technologies and advanced conductors, and reforms planning, incentives and permitting to help the existing transmission system carry more power. And it allows merchant transmission facilities to recover costs based on the reliability benefits they provide.
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