By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is expected to issue a final rule on Monday that could impose new requirements for transmitting electricity between states and covering the costs of new transmission projects – which will play a key role in the goal of the Biden administration to decarbonize the economy by 2050.
The FERC’s rule on regional transmission planning and cost allocation has been in development for almost two years. It aims to ensure that the U.S. power grid is resilient and can provide reliable clean electricity to meet growing U.S. demand amid the explosion of electric vehicles, data centers and artificial intelligence.
President Joe BidenThe US government has set a goal of a carbon-free energy sector by 2035 to combat climate change. To achieve that goal, the country must more than double regional transmission capacity and increase interregional transmission capacity more than fivefold, according to a U.S. Department of Energy study in November.
At Monday’s FERC meeting, commissioners will unveil and vote on the final rule.
The rule is expected to require utilities, transmission providers and state energy policymakers to conduct long-term planning to ensure there is enough transmission to bring new generation online for the first time.
“Unfortunately, very few utilities or regions have done this planning and it is stifling all new supply and demand trying to connect to the grid. This rule will help solve that,” said Rob Gramlich, president of transmission consultancy Grid Strategies.
Boosted by fiscal stimulus in Biden’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the queue of power generation projects waiting to connect to the grid currently stands at about 2,600 gigawatts, twice the amount of generation from the current fleet of U.S. power plants.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici; additional reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)
