Sponsors
The bill improves grid reliability planning, coordination, and transparency for utilities and governments but does so at the cost of added compliance burdens and a risk of slowing or constraining environmental and other agency rulemaking.
State and local governments (and grid operators) will receive timely, coordinated notifications of projected generation inadequacy, enabling faster federal-state coordination to prevent outages and other reliability risks.
Utilities and energy companies will get regular, region-specific long-term assessments showing where generation shortfalls may occur, helping planners target investments and reduce the risk of local reliability gaps.
The public and stakeholders will have greater transparency because ERO assessments and agency comments will be publicly available, improving visibility into reliability threats and policy responses.
EPA, DOE, and other regulatory bodies could face constraints or delays in finalizing emissions, permitting, or other environmental rules when those rules are reviewed through a reliability lens, potentially slowing climate and pollution protections.
Utilities, generators, and operators will incur additional compliance and reporting costs to provide the required data and participate in assessments and reviews.
Federal agencies may face increased administrative workload and slower rulemaking timelines as they respond to FERC reviews and coordinate on reliability-related issues, which can delay non‑reliability rulemaking and agency actions.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires annual long-term ERO assessments of generation risk, mandates FERC notification and interagency review of rules affecting generation, and bars final agency actions that FERC finds would harm reliability.
Introduced October 23, 2025 by Thomas Bryant Cotton · Last progress October 23, 2025
Requires the national electric reliability organization to do an annual long-term assessment of generation mix, transmission, demand trends, and risks of supply shortfalls under normal and extreme weather, and to tell FERC when it finds a generation inadequacy. Gives the ERO authority to collect data from bulk-power system users, owners, and operators for that assessment. Requires FERC to notify other federal agencies (like DOE and EPA) when a generation inadequacy is reported and establishes a formal review process: agencies must send regulations affecting generation resources to FERC for comment, must respond in writing to FERC’s comments, and may not finalize those agency actions until FERC determines there is no significant negative reliability impact. Public disclosure of assessments, comments, and responses is required.