Energy and Technology Issues Spotlighted in the House of Representatives

This week, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to confirm David Rosner, Lindsay See, and Judy Chang to be members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. As you may know, FERC plays a critical role in energy policy regarding interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. The next step is a full Senate vote and Senate Majority Leader Schumer has stated he will call up a vote for the FERC nominees the week of June 10th. ACEC has cosigned an industry coalition letter supporting a “swift confirmation” of the nominees.

On the House side, there was a hearing regarding the impact of AI and data centers on the electrical grid. Witnesses included representatives from academia, and utilities, and what we heard is that utilities are going to need at least double, and some are predicting even more baseload. While there was no uniform agreement on the types of power generation development (natural gas vs renewables), there was agreement that permitting continues to be the largest barrier. One highlight of the hearing was Congressman August Pfluger (R-TX) stating the following during the Q&A session, “I want to leave it to the engineers in designing a system that works.”