The Energy Department told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in early October that large electricity users, not households and other businesses, should pay for the new generation and grid equipment their projects require. The department filed a Notice of Intervention and Statement of Position in the commission’s proceeding on PJM Interconnection’s proposed Reliability Backstop Procurement. A certificate of service dates the filing October 7, 2026, and the department publicized it two days later.
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The filing asks for no ruling. It backs guidance the commission has already given and urges the grid operator to move quickly, which makes it a signal about where the federal government wants the cost fight in the nation’s largest power market to land. PJM operates the grid across the mid-Atlantic region and 13 states, and the governors of all 13 joined the administration’s January call for an emergency power auction, so the argument over who pays now has the federal energy agency, the regulator and the states all on the record.
The filing language on who pays
In its announcement, the department described the procurement reforms it supports as ensuring that large load users pay for new generation and infrastructure. The text of the filing itself is blunter. Citing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, it says that “large electric energy loads—not American households or other business ratepayers—must fund” what their projects require, and that “American households and businesses should not be footing the bill.”
The department also leans on a phrase borrowed from that pledge. It calls on large users to “build, bring, or buy every kilowatt their facilities need.” The pledge is a White House commitment from March, and the filing treats its signatories as the model for how new demand should show up on the grid: either with its own supply, with supply it contracts for, or with payment for the supply the system builds on its behalf.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright put the principle in one sentence in the release: the Energy Department supports having large electricity users pay for reliable new power generation. Deputy Secretary James P. Danly said the administration saw early warning signs of capacity shortfalls at PJM in January and that the proposed reforms increase transparency and prevent unjust cost shifts onto existing customers.
FERC’s September 29 order on the procurement
The department is arriving in the middle of a live case. In an order dated September 29, the commission accepted PJM’s procurement filing but suspended it for five months, to take effect February 28, 2027, subject to refund and a paper hearing under docket numbers ER26-3380-000 and EL26-108-000. It found several elements just and reasonable, including seller eligibility, a sell-offer cap set at 120 percent of capacity values, pay-as-bid clearing and a $555 per megawatt-day average-price cap.
Three questions were left open for the paper hearing: how costs are allocated, how transmission owners may exit, and what collateral load-serving entities must post. Cost allocation is the one the department’s filing addresses most directly. The commission wrote that it anticipates it “may need to direct significant modifications” after that hearing, which is the opening the department is pressing through.
The October 29 window and the three asks
The department does not request a specific commission order. It urges PJM to accept the commission’s accelerated option and submit a revised tariff under section 205 of the Federal Power Act by October 29, 2026. The commission’s own order treats that date as the end of a thirty-day window in which a new PJM filing would likely lead it to hold the briefing in abeyance, not as a compliance deadline.
On substance, the department asks PJM for three changes. Costs of the backstop procurement should be allocated so that they do not fall on existing ratepayers and so that large loads cannot avoid their share, which the filing says must be allocated at least roughly commensurate with benefits. PJM should require mandatory large-load identification and project-level tracking, so that demand forecasts rest on accurate and transparent information. And new large loads should have a clear path to build, bring or contract for their own capacity.
The January request that set the stage
The position is a continuation. On January 16, the department and Interior joined governors from the PJM region to ask the operator to hold an emergency procurement auction for more than $15 billion in reliable baseload generation, with 15-year revenue certainty for new plants. That release proposed allocating the cost of new generation to data centers that had not secured their own capacity or agreed to be curtailable. Wright said in it that high electricity prices are a choice.
The October filing is narrower in wording. In the passage quoted by the department it speaks of large loads, not data centers, and it leaves the details of who counts as a large load to the tariff PJM files. Whether the commission agrees will not be known until the paper hearing is briefed, after the windows in its September order close.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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