Welcome to Grid Brief! Here’s what we’re looking at today: the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advances a key permitting bill, a federal court strikes down a FERC pipeline, and Comanche Peak receives license renewal.

Senate Committee Advances Permitting Bill

Yesterday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 along bipartisan lines.

A comprehensive bill, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 includes several provisions to speed up timelines for transmission projects, reduce redundancies in the permitting process, and lower costs for consumers and developers. The Bipartisan Policy Center provides a good explainer of the bill. A few provisions worth highlighting:

• Section 401 of the bill simplifies the backstop authority of FERC to permit interregional transmission projects that are in the national interest. It also eliminates the requirement for DOE to designate National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors on needs studies as part of the process for using the federal backstop, a change that saves two to five years in the approval process.

• Section 401 also clarifies the cost-sharing of transmission projects to be proportional to the benefits that consumers receive. In other words, if you don’t benefit from new transmission, you don’t pay for the project.

• The bill also designates FERC as the lead agency to conduct environmental reviews of transmission projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Court Reverses FERC Approval of New Jersey Pipeline

Earlier this week the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down FERC’s approval of a New Jersey pipeline. The court found that FERC failed to adequately consider environmental consequences, lack of market demand, and New Jersey's state laws requiring reductions in gas consumption when it approved the Regional Energy Access Expansion project in 2023.

Recently, the same federal appellate court ordered FERC to reconsider the environmental and climate impacts of an approved LNG facility in Louisiana in Healthy Gulf v. FERC. That decision, and the one this week, indicate that federal courts may be increasing their scrutiny and oversight of FERC’s environmental reviews for key natural gas projects.

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Conversation Starters

• Texas nuclear plant gets license renewed (E&E News)

  Located southwest of Dallas, Comanche Peak has had its license renewed for 20 years. Commissioned in the early 90s, its two units generate 2,400 megawatts.

• Cable startup raises $60 million (Canary Media)

  On Wednesday, TS Conductor raised $60 million to finance a significant expansion of its advanced conductors. Made of aluminum surrounding a carbon composite core, these cables are lighter, stronger, and capable of carrying more electricity than the aluminum-and-steel cables that are used across most of the grid.

• Can innovation curb AI’s hunger for power? (The Wall Street Journal)

  As AI and cloud computing grow, companies are looking to reduce power consumption. Nvidia, for instance, says its machine-learning chips have become 45,000 times more energy efficient.

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