Washington D.C. — House Energy and Commerce Energy, Climate, and Grid Security Subcommittee Chair Jeff Duncan (R-SC) delivered the following opening remarks at today’s subcommittee hearing on ensuring reliable and affordable electricity with state public utility commissioners. 

“This hearing continues the Committee’s focus on affordable and reliable electricity. During this Congress, we have worked to understand what drives the growing reliability crisis in America. 

“Already, we have heard from FERC and grid operators about the very real threats facing reliability. 

“Today, we will hear from state public utility commissioners—utility regulators that answer to ratepayers in their states.” 

CHANGING MARKET DYNAMICS  

“State commissions and utilities use integrated resource plans to look at both the costs and benefits of the entire electricity portfolio over an extended period of time.  

“Commissions use these plans to ensure there’s enough electricity and that rates are fair and affordable.  

“However, changes to the electric sector over the past 20 years have presented new challenges to this mission. 

“Many states have introduced retail choice and rely more on regional transmission organization (RTO) and independent system operator (ISO) capacity markets. This has made it difficult for utility commissions to exercise their responsibility for ensuring affordability and reliability to protect ratepayers.” 

THREATS TO RELIABILITY 

“Threats to electric grid reliability are growing due to environmental regulations, policies from state legislatures and agencies, bans on fossil-fuel generation, and market distortions.  

“These factors are contributing to premature retirement for most of our reliable and dispatchable resources. Because of the increasingly interconnected nature of the grid, policy decisions that affect grid reliability have a much wider impact than ever before. 

“Some may say that more renewables and transmission can solve the problem of an increasingly unreliable grid. However, this plan increases costs and complexity and may even intensify certain risks in states reliant on borrowing power from others.  

“The full system costs of renewables are higher because of the need for extensive backup power and redundant transmission lines. Systems must be overbuilt to ensure there is power when the sun is down, and the wind isn’t blowing. 

“Building more transmission also raises utility costs for American ratepayers, even if those ratepayers may not directly benefit from added transmission.  

“Despite this, several states and regions carry on with their ideological objectives under a seemingly false sense of security that their neighbors can continue to save them.  

“Look at states like California and regions like New England, which have some of the most ambitious environmental goals, but they rely upon electricity imports from their neighbors as part of their planning.  

“Over the last two years, the California ISO imported about 15 percent of its total supply. New England imported about 15 percent of all its electricity last year. 

“Where are retail electricity rates highest? California and New England. 

“Even with all the warnings, the Biden administration continues its rush-to-green agenda with regulations like the EPA’s Clean Power Plan 2.0, which threatens to regulate reliable generation out of existence.  

“American ratepayers pay for the fallout from these retirements and the state utility commissions must justify the costs. 

“The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) monitors grid reliability and develops standards. They continue to warn us that over two-thirds of the country is running into a shortage of generation capacity, which will have dire consequences for grid reliability.  

“When an electric generator plans to retire and a study shows that the retirement would violate NERC reliability criteria, many states choose to ignore this guidance in favor of their radical environmental policies that increase the likelihood of blackouts. 

“For decades, people knew that when the lights went out, the state commissions and utilities were responsible. Because of the changes in the electricity landscape, it is now unclear who is responsible.  

“However, it is clear who is blamed—the state utility commissions.” 

“We must listen to state utility experts about the reliability challenges they are facing. Congress must learn what must do to prevent further retirement of reliable resources and to keep electricity affordable.

“Today will continue this process.”