Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it will formally grant the Railroad Commission of Texas (RRC) primary authority (known as “primacy”) to administer the Class VI Underground Injection Control (UIC) program for the geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide under the Safe Drinking Water Act. With this approval, developers pursuing carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in Texas will work directly with the RRC for Class VI well permitting, rather than navigating the EPA’s permit queue.

On October 31, 2025, FERC granted ISO New England’s (ISO-NE) request for a limited waiver of its Tariff and Billing Policy to refund, approximately $68,000 in Capacity Performance charges to Brookfield White Pine Hydro LLC (Brookfield).  The waiver relates to six five-minute intervals during a June 24, 2025 Capacity Scarcity Condition in which Harris Hydro Station’s Unit 2 (Harris 2) was manually held below its EcoMax[1] because ISO-NE allowed a non-commercial Large Generating Facility to operate on a constrained transmission line, thereby limiting Harris 2’s output and triggering an underperformance assessment.

On October 28, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (Fifth Circuit) denied several petitions for review of FERC’s authorization of Gas Transmission NW, LLC’s (GTN) GTN Xpress compressor expansion project (Project).  Specifically, the Fifth Circuit (1) denied GTN’s petition for review challenging FERC’s denial of a…

On October 20, 2025, FERC Staff issued a report outlining areas of risk to the reliability of the electric grid based on non-public Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Audits of U.S. based North American Electric Reliability (NERC) registered entities’ (Registered Entities) compliance with CIP Reliability Standards during Fiscal Year 2025 (FY2025).

Join host Bill Derasmo as he chats with Dr. Majid Keshavarz, chief technology officer at EnerVenue. They trace the evolution of nickel‑hydrogen batteries from their NASA origins in the 1970s — proven on missions like Hubble, the ISS, and Mars — to today’s grid applications. Tune in to learn how this inherently safe chemistry delivers decades‑long service life, high cycle counts, and recyclable materials for long‑duration, grid‑scale storage.

On October 10, 2025, FERC accepted Southwest Power Pool, Inc.’s (“SPP”) proposed revisions to its Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) to establish a provisional load interconnection process. SPP argued the provisional load interconnection process is driven by an increase in requests for load additions and will improve transmission planning and encourage new generation resources to come online by allowing SPP to study interconnection requests while accounting for planned generation. FERC accepted the tariff revisions subject to further compliance, finding the provisional load interconnection process will allow SPP to better understand the impacts of load requests and identify necessary network upgrades.

On October 7, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed the nominations of Laura V. Swett and David A. LaCerte as FERC Commissioners. Once they are sworn in as Commissioners, they will fill the remaining two seats on the five-member Commission. Commissioner Swett’s term ends on June 30, 2030, and she will…

On October 7, 2025, FERC rescinded the regulation that precluded natural gas pipeline companies from receiving authorization to proceed with construction of their new projects during the period for filing requests for rehearing of certificate orders, or while rehearing is pending. In doing so, FERC stated that its rescission will…

On October 1, 2025, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a final rule revising 53 regulations to include conditional sunset provision in response to the April 2025 Executive Order titled “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy.” FERC, along with nine other agencies, was required to establish one-year…

On September 30, 2025, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a joint petition for review brought by Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices (together, Petitioners) challenging FERC’s grant of a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) to Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company (Tennessee Gas) to construct a new natural gas…