The U.S. energy system is undergoing a period of profound transformation.
Energy demand is growing at a pace not seen in a generation, the technologies we use to produce electricity continue to evolve, and innovation is reshaping how our grid is planned, operated, and used by consumers. While meeting the moment presents challenges, this also creates a rare opportunity to modernize the energy infrastructure that underpins America’s economic competitiveness and national security, which will help ensure that every family and business that depends on the grid receives the reliable and affordable power they need. In 2025, FERC leaned into these opportunities—taking important steps that set the foundation for accelerated progress in 2026.
As the new year begins, I’m proud to highlight work my colleagues and I on the Commission undertook in 2025:
- Accelerating New Electric Generation of All Kinds: Developing the new energy resources needed to meet growing demand and to lower consumer costs was my top focus in 2025. I’m proud that over the course of the year, FERC tackled this issue on multiple fronts, including implementing the Commission’s landmark Order No. 2023 generator interconnection reforms throughout the country and accepting supplemental, temporary pathways to “fast-track” more than 50 gigawatts of shovel-ready new generation that is needed to protect reliability and affordability.
- Embracing Innovation to Power Large Loads while Protecting Consumers, including through Co-Location: It is an exciting time as the Commission and industry work together to power the industries that will unlock America’s future economic growth—from re-shored manufacturing to artificial intelligence and more. To complement the Commission’s efforts to bring needed new generation online, in 2025 FERC also adopted multiple reforms to enable large users of energy—such as data centers and industrial customers—to adopt operating arrangements and rate designs that meet their needs while also protecting reliability and affordability for all consumers. The Commission’s most significant action in this area was our December order directing PJM to establish new pathways for co-location—directly connecting a large load with the power needed to serve it at the same site—and load flexibility that enable large co-located loads to reduce how much they lean on the grid, while ensuring that they pay their fair share. As a result, PJM can avoid constructing unnecessary transmission upgrades for large loads, reduce strain on the grid, and make power bills cheaper for everyone—including for families and small businesses. And co-located large loads and generators can get online faster and easier than would otherwise be the case.
- Emphasizing Predictability, Speed, and Legal Durability for Infrastructure Permitting: Across all types of energy infrastructure where FERC has a permitting role, we moved faster in 2025 to meet the moment—because if we want more affordable and reliable energy, America needs to build more of everything. To that end, in 2025 the Commission issued more than 60 permits for hydropower and natural gas infrastructure projects. In many instances we are moving from NEPA review to final permit more than 30% faster than was typical during the last decade, but without compromising quality—FERC’s reviews were routinely upheld in court throughout last year, and we continue to weigh the views of all parties in our orders.
- Staying Laser-Focused on Energy Affordability: At a time when families and small businesses have seen increases in utility bills, FERC continues to focus on affordability. In addition to the Commission’s efforts to get new energy infrastructure online as soon as possible to lower bills, we have approved expanded competitive electric markets in the West and in the Southeast that will give customers access to more sources of lower-cost generation. In PJM we approved a suite of reforms to improve market efficiency and lower capacity market prices—making sure that all supply resources are offered into the auction at prices that reflect their actual costs, and applying a temporary price cap that together saved consumers more than $10 billion. And, after years of effort, we finalized Order No. 904, which eliminates “reactive power” payments customers had been making to generators that the Commission showed had no economic basis and yielded no consumer benefits. These payments totaled hundreds of millions of dollars annually in recent years.
- Modernizing Electric Reliability Standards: In collaboration with NERC, the Commission implemented several significant improvements to electric reliability in 2025, including finalizing new, broadly supported standards to improve generator performance during extreme cold weather events, strengthen supply chain risk management and accelerate technological modernization for critical infrastructure, and further secure inverter-based resources against voltage and frequency disturbances. FERC also held an interagency technical conference on wildfire risk mitigation, issuing a corresponding directive to NERC to examine known and emerging technologies, such as predictive artificial intelligence and dynamic line rating sensors, to mitigate such risks.
Looking ahead to 2026, I am laser-focused on continuing this momentum on reliability and affordability with my Commission colleagues and the expert staff at FERC, including by:
- Embracing New Technologies to Accelerate Generator Interconnection: Because building out new generation is essential to lowering prices and maintaining reliability, a key next step in accelerating generator interconnection is to deploy automation and artificial intelligence in the interconnection study process. Last Spring, I wrote to each of the RTOs and ISOs about how automation can reduce the time, cost, and labor associated with the interconnection study process and enable generation to connect to the grid faster. I am particularly proud to see the progress the MISO and SPP regions have made on study automation, and I look forward to other regions following suit in the year ahead. I am also interested to see how transmission utility partners put these technologies to use to speed up their respective parts of the interconnection process.
- Implementing FERC’s Regional Transmission Planning Reforms: This year, FERC will begin reviewing electric transmission providers’ proposals to implement the Commission’s bipartisan Order No. 1920. This critical rule adopts modernized reforms for transmission providers to conduct long-term transmission planning and, for the first time ever, incorporates input from our state partners in the DNA of the program, so that America can plan the backbone grid infrastructure needed to meet our growing energy demand and maximize benefits to consumers. Getting regional transmission planning right across the country will set up America to power the coming decades of economic growth, while also ensuring consumers are protected from paying for transmission that isn’t needed, that is inefficient, or doesn’t provide benefits to them. On a separate but related note, I stand ready to work with my colleagues on the role interregional transmission can play to strengthening grid reliability, as articulated in NERC’s Interregional Transfer Capability Study.
- Continuing to Advance Large Load Solutions while Protecting Residential Consumers: Last year, Secretary Wright asked FERC to consider reforms to ensure the timely and orderly interconnection of large loads to the transmission system, while also ensuring that families and small businesses do not foot the bill for the grid upgrades needed to support large consumers, such as data centers and industrial facilities. Through our recent PJM co-location order, the Commission has made significant progress on the matters referred to us by the Secretary. It’s also exciting to see that regions other than PJM have submitted, or are preparing to submit, their own proposals to address various large load matters. I’m eager to focus on these issues further in 2026.
- Streamlining Permitting Reviews: Building upon our progress last year on accelerating permitting for all types of needed energy projects, FERC is considering further action in 2026 to develop updated blanket permitting procedures for lower-impact hydropower and natural gas projects at existing facilities. Both the natural gas and hydropower industries have evolved significantly over the past twenty years, providing FERC a substantial record upon which we can streamline permitting for work that has already been well-studied and well-understood, while maintaining rigorous safety and environmental standards across the board.
- Improving Load Forecasting: At a time when many utilities forecast hundreds or thousands of megawatts of growth, improving these forecasts by even a few percentage points in the right direction—up or down—can impact billions of dollars in investments and customer bills. This is why I wrote to each of the RTOs and ISOs last Fall about improving load forecasting. In the coming year, I’m eager to continue the conversation about potential forecasting improvements that several transmission operators discussed in their responses to my letter.
- Enhancing Security and Reliability through Modernization and Flexibility: The Commission’s core responsibility—its job # 1—is to ensure the reliable operation of the country’s electric grid. The grid is changing faster than ever before and keeping pace with that change will be critical to maintaining reliability in the decades ahead. To that end, continuing to work with NERC and industry stakeholders to develop innovative solutions to better monitor, manage, and respond to reliability constraints, including deployment of advanced demand response, dynamic line ratings, and emerging cybersecurity technologies at the operational level is a critical priority. In addition, this year NERC will release reforms to its reliability standards development process, which will help accelerate the development of Reliability Standards that are the core of our grid’s security.
Sincerely,
