Regulatory Affairs news highlights: April 2025

 

Recent regulatory headlines we’re tracking include:

U.S. House Energy Subcommittee holds hearing on meeting energy demand growth

In early March, the U.S. House of Representatives Energy Subcommittee held a hearing on challenges facing utilities in delivering reliable, affordable electricity to meet the growing demand for power across the country. The hearing featured four witnesses: Todd Brickhouse, CEO and General Manager of Basin Electric Power Cooperative; Asim Haque, Senior Vice President for Governmental and Member Services, PJM; Noel Black, Senior VP of Regulatory Affairs, Southern Company; and Tyler Norris, James B. Duke Fellow at Duke University. There was discussion of the growing demand for power by AI data centers, the retirement of dispatchable resources, and how to maintain resource adequacy and reliability considering these trends.  

Mr. Brickhouse stated that the retirement of generation is not in the country’s national security interest, and Mr. Norris discussed his recent study examining the potential for flexible large load growth across the U.S. (such as demand response strategies for large loads).  Mr. Haque discussed PJM’s generation interconnection queue and the recent reforms to that interconnection process to help generation come online more quickly. He also discussed essential reliability services, how more generation of all types is needed, and that a diversified fuel mix can enhance reliability. There was discussion among the Congress members and the panel on various related topics, including consumer costs, supply chain and physical security concerns, and the increasing role of nuclear energy. A full recording of the hearing is available here. 

 

FERC Chairman Mark Christie discusses AI and demand growth 

FERC recently issued a press release sharing that Chairman Mark Christie appeared on the Platt’s S&P Global Energy podcast to discuss the challenge of rising power demand across the country. During the podcast, Christie explained FERC’s statutory role and reliability responsibilities and stated that AI and data centers are causing an increase in demand at a pace not seen in decades. He went on to state that dispatchable resources (e.g., coal and natural gas) are being retired, and new resources are not coming online as quickly as needed. Christie also discussed his thoughts on the electricity markets and how they relate to resource adequacy issues. There was discussion on how to protect consumers from paying too much for transmission, and Christie stated that transmission projects should be built to serve consumers but should not be overbuilt. He noted that local transmission projects (contained within a single utility) are seeing large growth and raised the question of whether these projects are being vetted to see if they are all necessary.  

 

FERC releases 2024 State of the Markets Report  

On March 20, FERC staff issued its annual State of the Markets Report for 2024.  The report states that electricity demand increased across all the regional transmission organizations and independent system operators (RTOs/ISOs) by 2.8% in 2024, and forecasts that electric loads will increase by 132 GW by summer 2029 and 149 GW by winter 2029.  

Also of note is its report on the changing resource mix, with coal decreasing by 3.3%, utility-scale solar increasing by 32%, and wind increasing by 7.7% compared to 2023. The report states that capacity prices have gone up in both PJM and MISO, and that natural gas prices have gone down slightly (except for in the Northeast). The report also cites the 2024 Long-Term Reliability Assessment’s statement that the loss of thermal generators and replacement by solar, battery, and hybrid resources may pose future reliability concerns.  

Regarding transmission, the report states that over 450 new transmission projects entered service in 2024 across the U.S. While solar and storage made up 81% of queue capacity at the end of the year, natural gas generation and storage made up the most capacity entering the queue during the year. The report then discusses increasing load growth due to electrification and data centers, and how resource adequacy issues are causing increases in capacity market prices. The full report is linked here. 

 

CISA, NSA, FBI issue cybersecurity advisory on ‘fast flux’ cyber evasion technique 

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the NSA, FBI, and other agencies, have issued a joint Cybersecurity Advisory warning about a malicious cyber actor evasion technique called “fast flux,” stating that many networks have a gap in their defenses for detecting and blocking this technique. The advisory goes into detail about the technique and encourages service providers to take specific proactive steps to develop accurate, reliable, and timely fast flux detection analytics and blocking capabilities for their customers. The advisory also recommends that all organizations take the following mitigation steps: 

• Block access to domains identified as using fast flux through non-routable DNS responses or firewall rules 
• Consider sink-holing the malicious domains, redirecting traffic from those domains to a controlled server to capture and analyze the traffic, helping to identify compromised hosts within the network 
• Block IP addresses known to be associated with malicious fast flux networks 
• Block traffic to and from domains or IP addresses with poor reputations, especially ones identified as participating in malicious fast flux activity 
• Increase logging and monitoring of DNS traffic and network communications to identify new or ongoing fast flux activities 
• Participate in public and private information-sharing programs to stay informed about emerging fast flux tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) 
• Conduct phishing awareness and training