Welcome to Grid Brief! Here’s what we’re looking at today: Congress considers a series of permitting bills, transmission providers float ways to speed up interconnection, and the aging nuclear workforce.

Congress Considers Permitting Legislation

Yesterday, the House Committee on Natural Resources held a full committee hearing to consider legislation to modernize the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969. Signed into law in before the enactment of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and a slew of other state environmental laws and statutes, NEPA has become an impediment to the buildout of reliable and affordable energy and grid infrastructure (which has ironically hurt the environment).

First, the committee considered a draft bill introduced by Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) that would modernize the language of NEPA, tailor the scope of focus for what federal agencies can consider in their environmental reviews, expand the list of categorical exclusions, and narrow the statute of limitations for NEPA lawsuits to 120 days (currently it is six years).

Westerman is currently working with Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA), to introduce a comprehensive bipartisan permitting package akin to the Energy Permitting Act of 2024 in the Senate. This draft bill may serve as jumping off point for these discussions.

The bipartisan Studying NEPA's Impact on Projects Act, introduced by Rep. Rudy Yakym (R-IN), would direct the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to publish an annual report on the NEPA projects and outcomes to improve transparency for lawmakers and project sponsors. This report would study the time it takes agencies to complete environmental impact statements under NEPA. It would also examine NEPA-related lawsuits such as the causes of litigation and the time it takes courts to issue a ruling.

The third piece of legislation considered by the Natural Resources Committee was H.J. Res. 168, introduced by Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA). This would invoke the Congressional Review Act to strike down CEQ’s Phase Two rule and direct the agency to create a new ruling. Implemented earlier this year, the Phase Two rule made several changes to the NEPA process, including directing agencies to consider long-term global climate impacts and social issues in their environmental reviews.

Watch the full discussion of the bills here.

National Grid and Constellation Look to Address Interconnection Queue

At a FERC workshop on Tuesday, National Grid and Constellation proposed ways to reduce the interconnection queue, which grew by 30% in 2023 to 2.6 TW. Last year, FERC issued Order 2023 which directs providers to conduct a “first-ready, first-served cluster study process to weed out speculative projects in interconnection queues,” according to Ethan Howland of Utility Dive.

Under National Grid’s proposal, providers could create a capped priority queue that would run alongside the overall interconnection queue. Projects in the priority queue would be accessed through a solicitation process and scored on systems needs, reliability, and cost.

Constellation proposed a similar plan, calling for an “expedited reliability process.” This process would prioritize interconnection requests based on project readiness and reliability. PJM is also considering a proposal that would prioritize shovel-ready projects in the interconnection queue.

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Conversation Starters

• America’s nuclear renaissance may be hamstrung by a lack of nuclear engineers (Wall Street Journal)

  Despite increasing public support for nuclear power, the industry’s workforce is aging. 17 percent of workers in the industry are over the age of 55 and 60 percent are aged between 30 and 54. 23 percent of workers were aged under 30, compared with 29 percent for other energy workers. Meanwhile, the number of students graduating with bachelor’s degrees in nuclear engineering in the U.S. fell by 25 percent between 2012 and 2022.

• Race for underground hydrogen picks up (CNBC)

  Geologic hydrogen is naturally occurring under Earth’s surface. More and more startups around the world are forming to tap into this potentially abundant power carrier.

• Chinese startup aims to produce fusion at half the cost of American companies (Financial Times)

  Energy Singularity is seeking to raise $500 million to develop cheaper next-generation nuclear fusion technology. The Shanghai startup was founded in 2021 and has been developing a small-scale tokamak, a machine expected to be at the heart of fusion power plants.

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