The United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rejected a proposal from the US Department of Energy (DoE) on grid reliability and resilience pricing, which aimed at subsidizing coal-fired and nuclear plants in some parts of the United States.
The proposal planned to provide short-term support for struggling power plants and included in particular cost recovery for US plants with 90 days of fuel supplies on site (mainly coal-fired and nuclear power plants). The FERC took this decision, arguing that there is no evidence that planned retirements of coal-powered plants pose a threat to the domestic electric grid's reliability. In addition, this support would have distorted prices in competitive power markets.
However, the FERC also initiated a new proceeding on grid resilience and will review the domestic power grid. It requested information from regional transmission system operators (TSOs) and other independent operators that oversee the grid within 60 days to decide whether additional action is needed.