Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is leading a coalition of 19 states to challenge the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) decision to adopt rules that would enforce the Biden Administration’s “green energy” transition onto states.
FERC Order No. 1920, issued on May 13, 2024, grants unprecedented electrical grid oversight to FERC, compromising the ability of individual states to determine the most efficient mix of energy sources for their electrical grids. The new rule also forces states to cover the costs of expensive regional transmission lines to support “green energy” generation, even when such expenditures contradict the state’s needs and decrease grid efficiency and reliability.
“FERC has never been granted the authority to revamp the structure of state energy grids or force states and their ratepayers to subsidize large-scale transmission lines that don’t transport enough energy to justify the cost,” said Paxton. “This encroachment upon state authority far exceeds FERC’s limited purview and damages the ability of states to regulate their electric grids efficiently, all in the name of advancing costly climate goals.”
As noted in the filing, the Commission’s rule would “usurp the States’ exclusive authority over generation choices by adopting planning rules designed to benefit remote renewable generation and renewable developers, and shift billions or trillions of dollars in transmission costs from those developers onto electric consumers.”
To read the filing, click here.
