Trump’s Emergency Bailouts Harm FERC’s Resource Adequacy
By Tyson Slocum
Today in Federal Energy Regulatory Commission docket No. AD25—7 we submit the following comments. The Commission’s authorities to ensure resource adequacy are being usurped by unprecedented power market interference by the Trump Administration’s U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). DOE, utilizing a non-public reserve margin methodology and other untransparent meddling, is abusing Federal Power Act emergency authorities to broadly target resource adequacy and force ratepayer bailouts of fossil fuel generation resources that serve its incoherent political objective of “energy dominance”. This new, expansive and unlawful intrusion by DOE into power markets threatens FERC’s independence, market integrity, and any thoughtful efforts to ensure resource adequacy. As part of this proceeding, the Commission must compel sworn declarations or oral testimony of relevant DOE officials to detail DOE’s activities in establishing its own reserve margins and its ongoing efforts to utilize emergency powers to promote politically-favored generation resources.
On April 8, President Donald J. Trump issued Executive Order 14262, Strengthening the Reliability and Security of the United States Electric Grid in which the Department of Energy establishes its own reserve margins in Commission-jurisdictional markets. Section 3(b) of the order states that
the Secretary of Energy shall develop a uniform methodology for analyzing current and anticipated reserve margins for all regions of the bulk power system regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and shall utilize this methodology to identify current and anticipated regions with reserve margins below acceptable thresholds as identified by the Secretary of Energy. This methodology shall: (i) analyze sufficiently varied grid conditions and operating scenarios based on historic events to adequately inform the methodology; [and] (ii) accredit generation resources in such conditions and scenarios based on historical performance of each specific generation resource type in the real time conditions and operating scenarios of each grid scenario.
This non-public DOE reserve margin report was completed May 8. On May 23, the DOE Secretary issued an unprecedented emergency order under Section 202c of the Federal Power Act to force the J.H. Campbell coal power plant slated for deactivation to continue operating for unspecified resource adequacy needs, which was followed by a similar order a week later for the gas-fueled Eddystone facility. Public Citizen has challenged both emergency orders by filing a petition for hearing with DOE. We are also challenging the cost-recovery filings for both emergency orders at the Commission (the Eddystone cost recovery proceeding is docket No. ER25-2653).
Read the full pdf filing here TrumpRA