The House Energy and Commerce Committee is being careful to differentiate new reliability legislation it is developing as separate from a bill it passed to allow states to opt out of emission rules for power plants that the GOP argues could hurt the reliable flow of electricity.
A House aide says a new draft proposal on electric reliability that the committee held a hearing on Tuesday has little to do with the Environmental Protection Agency’s emission rules, also known as the Clean Power Plan.
The aide said the committee is treating the Clean Power Plan legislation and the electric reliability draft as separate bills that the committee leadership will not seek to combine. Instead, the legislation will move on two separate tracks.
The Ratepayer Protection Act, which addresses the Clean Power Plan directly, will move to the floor on its own after advancing out of the full committee late last month.
The bill would allow states to opt out of compliance with the EPA rules if a governor finds that it would raise electric costs or harm the reliable flow of electricity. The Clean Power Plan sets state-specific goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2020, with the target of reducing 30 percent of the nation’s emissions by 2030.
The plan is the centerpiece of President Obama’s agenda to address manmade climate change, which most scientists say is being caused by the emissions the EPA proposal seeks to limit.
The discussion draft on “Energy Reliability and Security” will be developed as part of a broader energy bill that energy committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., is developing separately from the Clean Power Plan legislation.
Observers note that combining a measure that addresses the EPA emission rules with a comprehensive energy bill could drive a wedge between Democrats and Republicans, making it difficult to pass an energy package.
When the Ratepayer Protection Act was marked up in committee, several Democrats attempted to hobble it with amendments while decrying it as a means of eroding the EPA’s authority. The bill passed by a narrow voice vote of 28-23.
Nevertheless, the reliability discussion draft attempts to address some issues that have arisen from environmental rules affecting the grid, according to Upton.
He said in prepared remarks Tuesday that “utilities are being asked to comply with a number of challenging new environmental requirements which may have the unintended consequence of putting reliability at increased risk and limiting the ability to respond when things do go wrong.”
The draft bill seeks to “head off any potential conflict between environmental measures and reliability.” Upton says “[n]ew regulations raise potential reliability issues by reducing the diversity of the power supply, necessitating early retirements of existing base load capacity, introducing more non-base load resources, and adding red tape that limits the flexibility to respond to an emergency.”
The reliability draft seeks to resolve the Department of Energy’s so-called “must-run” authority, which can be used to order a power plant to generate electricity, even though it would be out of compliance with environmental rules. Power plants have been fined by environmental regulators for being ordered by the Energy Department to generate electricity because of a threat to reliability.
Upton wants to fix the issue. He also wants more analysis done on the impact of federal regulations on grid reliability.
He appears to differentiate between environmental rules, which he says may result in “unintended” reliability problems, and more deliberate actors, such as cyber terrorists, who deliberately conspire to bring down the power grid.
“These and other challenges are made even more serious by the fact that the nation’s electric grid is overdue for a major upgrade,” Upton added. “We may have the best electricity system in the world, but it won’t stay that way for long without substantial new investments.”
