NERC is examining a series of energy-focused executive orders issued by the White House in a “whirlwind week” for their impact on grid reliability, CEO Jim Robb told the ERO’s Member Representatives Committee in a conference call April 10.
President Donald Trump signed the orders April 8, seeking to keep existing coal-fired plants open and strengthen grid reliability and security by requiring the Department of Energy to conduct an assessment identify regions with reserve margins “below acceptable thresholds,” and weaken state and local governments’ ability to regulate energy utilities. (See Trump Seeks to Keep Coal Plants Open, Attacks State Climate Policies.)
The president also released a proclamation that coal plants be exempt from the latest iteration of EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards to ensure they are not prematurely closed.
Speaking at the MRC’s April Informational Session, held in advance of the MRC and Board of Trustees’ May open meetings, Robb said NERC and DOE are “still digesting” the executive actions. He added that NERC staff were meeting with DOE “as we speak” to see how the ERO can assist with the reliability assessment.
DOE must complete the assessment within 30 days of the order’s issuance and release it on the department’s website within 90 days. In addition, Energy Secretary Chris Wright must establish a process to regularly assess the assessment’s methodology, along with any analysis and results produced, and “a protocol to identify which generation resources within a region are critical to system reliability.”
Robb noted that work is underway in Congress on “a fairly similar” bill that would require FERC to use material from NERC’s Long-term Reliability Assessment to “look at how to address the resource adequacy challenges that [NERC has] been flagging for a number of years.”
While Robb acknowledged “there’s more uncertainty than certainty around these” recent events, he told members they indicate “profound changes in direction for energy policy” in the U.S. He emphasized that NERC is “in the mix” with FERC and DOE to determine the best way to meet Trump’s directives.
Robb also told members that NERC has been conducting conversations with the regional entities on enhancing the ERO’s reliability assessments by incorporating additional metrics and other means. He suggested the administration’s moves “may put a little bit more urgency in us moving down the path of renovating those assessments.”
Trustee Ken DeFontes observed that Trump’s executive orders have revealed a public awareness of energy reliability issues that surprised him. He told members about a recent community meeting he attended in Maryland about a proposed transmission line project for the generation planned to replace the Brandon Shores and Wagner plants. The stations, which are fired by coal and oil respectively, were slated for closure until their operator Talen Energy reached an agreement with PJM earlier in 2025 to keep them operating while the transmission was built.
“You can imagine the community was not very happy about [the new transmission]. What’s interesting is, one of the ladies got up and said, ‘Well, I understand President Trump just issued an executive order mandating that coal plants not be shut down. So if we can get that through, then the plants will stay in business, and we don’t need the transmission line,’” DeFontes said. “She was just somebody from the community. I was surprised; the word’s getting out.”
