Last Thursday, APGA members had the opportunity to meet with the five Commissioners of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). APGA engages with the agency, as member systems are often impacted by FERC’s decisions pertaining to interstate transmission rate setting and subsequent rate cases, among other things. During the meetings, these member system representatives shared some of the current issues they were facing and engaged in a productive discussion regarding a few asks they had for FERC to consider. Following the meetings, APGA provided the commissioners with a letter to further outline our concerns.
On Tuesday, the House Energy & Commerce’s Subcommittee on Energy hosted a hearing to conduct oversight on FERC, at which all five Commissioners participated as witnesses. This House Subcommittee has jurisdiction over the Natural Gas Act and several of APGA’s other policy priorities. APGA members should be pleased to hear that policymakers at the hearing asked the commissioners a series of questions focused on permitting reform prioritization, energy demand increase due to data centers, and how to keep costs down for ratepayers while addressing increasing energy demand. Commissioner LaCerte quoted a line directly from the letter APGA sent to FERC. The transcript of the exchange is below:
Commissioner LaCerte: “As we are looking at transmission, I think that we have to acknowledge that more transmission is needed, but it has to be thoughtful, and well-planned transmission. It has to be transmission that is needed. It has to be transmission that is the best bag [sic] for the buck for the consumer. . . . I had American Public Gas Association in my office last week. . . . [Quoting our letter we sent] ‘Nearly 95% of the 1,000 public- or community-owned natural gas systems in the United States are captive to a single pipeline.’ One pipeline, that’s the only rates they have. If we build more capacity and pipelines, that’s going to drive prices down. Americans are hungry for that, municipal governments are hungry for that, and we aim to give that to them.”
The topics covered at the hearing were broad but primarily focused on future plans to improve processes that will hopefully increase both electric and natural gas transmission capacity. There was an emphasis on the increased use of technology and machine learning to make engineering calculations more efficient and cost-effective.
APGA also submitted a letter to the record for this hearing, which can be viewed here. The letter to FERC can be viewed here, and the YouTube link to watch a recording of the hearing can be viewed here. Commissioner LaCerte quotes APGA at the 2:20:30 timestamp.
For questions on this article, please contact Emma Rowland or Maddie Sheppard of APGA staff by email at erowland@apga.org or msheppard@apga.org.