Guaranteeing Reliability Through the Interconnection of Dispatchable Power Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BALDERSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of my bill, the GRID Power Act.

This legislation is critical to ensure our Nation has the dispatchable baseload power needed to meet historic demand growth and guarantee that the lights turn on when our constituents flip the switch.

PJM, the largest grid operator in the Nation and sole grid operator for my home State of Ohio, has announced that they expect to lose about 40 gigawatts of generation by 2030. That is 21 percent of PJM's total capacity, and new power generation is not coming online quickly enough to offset the risk posed by retiring resources.

Between 2022 and 2023 alone, PJM saw over 11,000 megawatts of generation deactivated while only adding 4,000 megawatts of new generation to the grid. It doesn't take an expert to see that retiring power plants outpacing new generation is a problem.

This is especially concerning for my district and central Ohio, which has become a national hub for data center construction. These new facilities are at the heart of powering the AI revolution, but we must now figure out how we can power them while ensuring our constituents have access to reliable and affordable energy.

We saw how close we were to power scarcity in Ohio over the summer, as utilities warned Ohio residents to reduce energy power during peak demand to help prevent rolling power outages. Ohio families should not have to face a power emergency for running their air conditioning.

We have the natural resources needed. We have the ability to build more power generation. This is clearly a public policy failure, and we can fix it by addressing the broken interconnection process.

Interconnection queues are lists maintained by transmission system operators--such as independent system operators, regional transmission organizations, or transmission providers--that track pending requests for new generation facilities to connect to the grid.

Right now, our Nation's interconnection queues are buckling under their own weight. The growing backlog of projects is adding years to an already slow process and prevents shovel-ready projects from being built and connected.

According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, almost 2,600 gigawatts of generation projects are sitting in interconnection queues across the country. That is more than double the amount of the existing generation currently on the grid. The median wait time for projects has now stretched to 5 years.

With demand growth accelerating and retirements mounting in Ohio and across the country, we cannot afford to wait 5 years or more, and we certainly cannot afford to keep delaying critical projects.

The GRID Power Act addresses this by requiring FERC to develop rules that allow grid operators to fast-track critical generation needed to ensure reliability and meet demand, bypassing the years-long wait in the interconnection queue.

The bill also promotes transparency by requiring that grid operators provide opportunities for public comment and stakeholder engagement before submitting proposals to FERC. Operators must also provide regular reports to FERC on the state of grid reliability and actions taken under this bill.

Finally, FERC must review and, if necessary, update its regulations to ensure they remain effective in addressing evolving challenges to grid reliability and resiliency.

Let me be clear: This bill is fuel-neutral. Nowhere in the text does it single out fossil fuels or renewables. Instead, it establishes a process to fast-track projects based on their ability to enhance the reliability and resiliency of the electric grid.

As we face a looming electricity shortfall, we must recognize that weather-dependent, intermittent resources alone cannot meet the challenge. Grid operators across the Nation have been clear over the last several years that we need more dispatchable power to come online to protect us from rolling blackouts.

If we want to keep American businesses running and ensure uninterrupted power for our constituents, we must fix the broken interconnection queue.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this commonsense bill that equips our grid operators with the tools they need to do their job. I would like to end by thanking Chairman Guthrie, Subcommittee Chairman Latta, and the Energy and Commerce Committee staff for all their hard work in getting this bill to the floor.

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