New Act Grants FERC Power to Force Power Plants to Stay Open for 5 Years, Overriding Environmental Laws

The new Power Plant Reliability Act of 2025 is looking to change how our electricity grid stays online, and it gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) some serious new muscle. Essentially, this bill says that if a state commission or a grid operator complains that the electric service is going to be inadequate—either now or within the next five years—FERC can step in and order the utility to keep a specific generating unit running.

The Five-Year Freeze on Retirement

For most people, the biggest change here is the new retirement timeline. Right now, utilities decide when to shut down a power plant based on economics, maintenance costs, and market signals. This bill throws a five-year wrench into that process. Under Section 2, any owner of a generating unit (5 megawatts or larger) must give FERC and the affected state commissions at least five years’ advance notice before they plan to retire it. Think of it as giving your landlord five years' notice instead of 30 days. This is designed to stop sudden plant closures that can cause reliability headaches, but it also means utilities lose flexibility and may be forced to operate plants that are no longer cost-effective.

When Reliability Trumps Regulation

Here’s the part that is going to raise some eyebrows: the Compliance Protection clause. If FERC orders a utility to keep a power plant running to ensure adequate service, and that continued operation causes the utility to violate a Federal, State, or local environmental law, the bill shields the utility. That’s right—the action or omission taken to comply with the FERC order is not considered a violation of the environmental law. The utility is protected from civil or criminal liability and citizen suits.

What does this mean for you? Say you live near an older coal or gas plant that was scheduled to shut down because it couldn't meet new state pollution standards. If FERC orders that plant to stay open for five more years to keep the lights on in a neighboring state, the utility can keep running that plant without fear of penalty, even if it continues polluting at levels that violate local laws. The bill ensures grid stability, but the cost of that stability might be borne by the air quality and health of the community near the plant.

Who Pays the Bill?

If FERC forces a plant to stay open, they have to figure out how to pay for it. The bill requires FERC to determine the necessary rate or charge to compensate the utility for the additional costs of providing this adequate service, including the cost of keeping the generating unit operating. These costs will then be allocated to the affected parties. In plain English, if FERC mandates that an uneconomical plant stays online, consumers in the region—potentially you—will likely see a new line item on their electric bill to cover the tab. This ensures the utility doesn't eat the cost of forced operation, but it means you might pay more to keep an aging plant running longer than planned.

The Bottom Line

This bill is a massive power shift toward federal control over the electric grid's infrastructure planning. The goal is clear: prevent unexpected blackouts and ensure reliability across state lines. But it achieves this by giving FERC the unprecedented authority to overrule utility retirement plans and, critically, to override state and local environmental protections for up to five years. For busy people, the trade-off is between potentially higher reliability and potentially higher pollution and electricity costs, depending on which aging plant FERC decides needs a five-year extension.