NWPPA Morning Brief

NWPPA Morning Brief - Tuesday, June 16, 2026

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NWPPA Morning Brief — Tuesday, June 16, 2026

In today's brief:

Top Federal Developments

Top Regional / State Developments

Pilot notice: AI-generated daily briefing. Verify before acting on it.

Feel free to reach out if you have comments or concerns.

SPEAKER_00

Before we begin, a quick note. The NWPPA morning brief is Generative AI, daily intelligence on the federal and Western developments shaping public power. It isn't human-reviewed before publication, so treat it like any AI tool and verify what you'll act on or cite. Sources are in the show notes. You're listening to the NWPPA morning brief. On today's brief, DOE orders Centralia Unit 2 to stay online through summer peak. A federal court reinstates $82 million in canceled clean energy grants. The Justice Department drops its wind-lease moratorium appeal. NWPPA's CEO presses Oregon senators on wildfire forest legislation. Platte River breaks ground on a 100 megawatt battery in Colorado. Salt River Project adds a CO2 long-duration storage system in Arizona. The Senate Energy Committee advances roadless rule repeal. And House Energy Chair Guthrie pushes to write data center cost pay obligations into federal law. Today's briefing is brought to you by the Northwest Public Power Association. Stronger workforce, greater influence, informed decisions. Serving community-owned electric utilities across the West since 1940.

SPEAKER_01

The Centralia story leads the day. DOE invoked emergency authority to keep a coal plant running through September 13th, and that order lands directly on top of a Columbia Snake Hydro system tracking well below normal for the April through September water supply season. That's not coincidence. That's federal grid reliability policy responding to a real supply gap in the Pacific Northwest. The question public power CEOs should be turning over right now is how TransAlta recovers operating costs during this extension, and whether DOE signals another order before September 13th arrives.

SPEAKER_00

And mid-sea buyers need to be thinking about this now. A dispatchable coal unit staying on the margin changes the near-term capacity picture heading into peak cooling season. That's not a small development when hydro is running short.

SPEAKER_01

Let's get into it. Start with Centralia Unit 2. DOE's emergency order requires Transalta to keep the unit available to run for 90 days through September 13th. The authority DOE invoked here is the power to compel specific plants to remain operational past their planned status to protect grid reliability. This is a direct federal intervention in Pacific Northwest resource adequacy, and it's happening because the Columbia Snake system is tracking below normal heading into summer. For public power utilities buying off mid-sea or relying on regional capacity during peak, a coal unit that was on the way out stays dispatchable through the heart of the cooling season.

SPEAKER_00

The cost recovery piece is the open variable. How DOE structures Transalta's cost recovery during the extension will shape whether this tool gets used again and on what terms. That's worth tracking before the order expires.

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Moving to the Clean Energy Grants ruling, a federal judge on June 12th struck down DOE's October 2025 cancellation of 11 clean energy grants worth $82.1 million and ordered the department to reinstate the funding. Oregon was among the states affected with four awards to the New Buildings Institute at stake. Plaintiffs argued the cancellations were politically targeted and pointed to a January settlement in which DOE was ordered to reverse $27.6 billion in similar cancellations. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told a House committee on June 10th that politics did not drive the decisions.

SPEAKER_00

The pattern matters here. Courts have now consistently restored canceled federal energy awards. For any public power entity or project partner holding a paused DOE efficiency or renewable energy grant, the question is whether to keep cost-sharing commitments alive while litigation continues. And this ruling gives a clearer answer than we had last week.

SPEAKER_01

Turning to the wind lease moratorium, the Justice Department on June 15 filed a brief memorandum voluntarily withdrawing its appeal of a December 2025 district court ruling that struck down the executive order, pausing federal wind lease reviews. Interior gave no explanation. The lower court ruling stands, and the standard federal review pathway for new onshore and offshore wind projects is restored.

SPEAKER_00

Two reads on this. One is that the administration is conceding the wind pause litigation rather than risk a circuit level precedent that locks in bad law for them. The other is that they're preserving flexibility to act through other federal levers. For Western utilities with wind in their resource plans, the practical effect right now is that federal land wind permitting reopens through normal channels. That's the operative fact for resource planning.

SPEAKER_01

Next up, the Fix Our Forests Act. NWPPA CEO Kurt Miller published an op-ed in the Hill calling on Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley to back the bipartisan bill. The legislation would extend hazardous tree removal authority on federal land to 150 feet from utility infrastructure, streamline federal permitting for wildfire mitigation work, and tighten the window for courts to review fuel reduction projects. It cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee 18 to 5 and has backing from governors in California, Montana, Colorado, and Utah. Oregon Senators have not signed on.

SPEAKER_00

Some conservation groups argue the bill favors expanded logging over home hardening and agency staffing. That tension is real and it's why the Oregon Senators are where they are. But for public power utilities operating in federal land corridors, the vegetation management and permitting provisions are directly tied to wildfire liability exposure and the cost of grid hardening. This one is as operational as it is political.

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Shifting to the NRECA Cybersecurity Grant, DOE awarded the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association $6 million to expand research and development on cybersecurity tools for rural electric cooperatives. The work will focus on operational technology environments common at smaller co-ops, where dedicated cyberstaffing and budgets are thinner than at large investor-owned utilities.

SPEAKER_00

For cooperative members in particular, the practical question is which tools and reference architectures come out of this work and on what timeline? Specifically, whether they become available for deployment without separate licensing costs. $6 million is targeted money, and the value is in whether the outputs are actually deployable at a co-op scale.

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Over to the Rocky Mountain Power rate case, Rocky Mountain Power has filed a 38% rate increase for pump irrigators at the Wyoming Public Service Commission, steeper than what it's seeking from other customer classes. Wyoming farmers and ranchers say the increase would threaten agricultural operations. The case puts class cost of service allocation squarely before a Western state regulator.

SPEAKER_00

For public power utilities and cooperatives across the mountain west serving large irrigation loads, this Wyoming proceeding is a live precedent on how regulators weigh cost of service studies against agricultural affordability. Watch how the commission handles the class differential. That's the reasoning that travels. Moving to Platte River's Battery Project. Platte River Power Authority and Next Era Energy Resources broke ground on the Weld Energy Center, a 100 megawatt battery storage project in Weld County, Colorado, representing a $141 million local investment. It's Platte River's first large-scale battery project, owned and operated by a Next Era subsidiary under a contract with Platte River, which serves Fort Collins, Loveland, Longmont, and Estes Park. The storage supports renewable integration as Platte River moves toward retiring its Rawhide Coal unit in 2029.

SPEAKER_01

The contracting structure here is the reference point. Platte River owns the capacity rights through a contract, while Nextera owns and operates the physical asset. For public power joint action agencies evaluating storage without the balance sheet to own outright, this is a current data point on how that structure gets built and on what timeline.

SPEAKER_00

Turning to Salt River Project, SRP announced a 20-year tolling agreement, a long-term contract under which SRP pays for the right to dispatch the facility's output with Energy Dome for a 19 megawatt, 10-hour CO2 battery long-duration storage system co-located at SRP's Coronado Generating Station in Arizona. The project is part of SRP's collaboration with Google to advance non-lithium ion long-duration storage and is one of the first utility-scale CO2 battery deployments by a Western public power utility.

SPEAKER_01

For utilities managing evening solar ramps and multi-hour capacity gaps, the SRP project is a near-term operating reference for a non-lithium chemistry at meaningful scale. Cost and performance data will become visible as it moves into operation. That's genuinely useful signal for anyone evaluating long-duration options beyond lithium ion. On the California front, the California Public Utilities Commission voted 3 to 1 to adopt a new framework for the state's community solar program, setting a compensation rate for developers below what a developer coalition had sought. Derek Chernow of Californians for Local Affordable Solar and Storage said the program is, in his words, unworkable and destined for continued failure. The vote follows the Trump administration's cancellation last year of the $250 million Federal Solar for All grant that had been central to California's plan.

SPEAKER_00

Community solar program design in California is watched closely by regulators in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and Nevada. How the CPUC handled the rate-setting tension between developer viability and ratepayer cost is the precedent that matters for comparable proceedings affecting distributed generation procurement and bill credit structures in those states.

SPEAKER_01

On the pricing front, Front Month Henry Hub Natural Gas Futures were trading at $3.15 per million BTU on June 16th, up from $3.08. NYMEX WTI Front Month Crude Futures were trading at $77.73 per barrel, down from $80.26. The 10-year Treasury yield was 4.48% on June 12th, up from 4.45%. COMEX Copper settled at $6.49 per pound on June 15th, up from $6.48.

SPEAKER_00

Shifting to the congressional scan, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to approve legislation nullifying the Clinton-era roadless rule, which protects over 58 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in national forests, including land in the Pacific Northwest. Repeal would affect transmission siting, fuel reduction work, and rights of way decisions in federal forest land running through many Western Utility Service territories. Separately, NRECA and six other energy groups sent a letter to House and Senate leaders urging passage of $10 billion in low-income energy assistance, citing rate pressure from load growth and infrastructure investment. On the market structure side, Connecticut's Attorney General and state agencies filed a complaint at FERC seeking elimination of the half percent return on Equity Adder, a tariff incentive that rewards utilities for voluntarily joining and remaining in a regional transmission organization that Eversource and Avingrid utilities receive for participating in ISO New England. Connecticut argues a 2025 state law mandating ISO any participation makes the voluntary membership adder inappropriate.

SPEAKER_01

FERC's reasoning on whether mandated participation disqualifies the adder is what Western utilities need to track. As CAISO's EE Dam and broader RTO expansion advance, that same logic could carry over to Western filings. If you're voluntarily in a market that later becomes mandatory, does the adder survive? That's the jurisdictional question this complaint is going to force FERC to answer.

SPEAKER_00

On the hydrology front, NWRFC's April through September water supply forecast has Columbia River runoff at Bonneville Dam at 84% of average and Snake River runoff at Lower Granite Dam at 70% of average. Both tracking below normal heading into summer peak, members with hydropower exposure or mid-sea market reliance should keep watching.

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And on the large load legislation front, House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie said on June 10th he wants to move legislation writing into federal statute the requirement that data centers pay the full cost of infrastructure needed to serve them. His committee held a hearing on a draft Rate Payer Protection Act that would amend PERPA to require large electricity users to cover the full cost of infrastructure built to serve them. The push runs parallel to FERC's expected end of June order on large load interconnection.

SPEAKER_00

The open question for public power utilities fielding data center inquiries is whether statutory cost pay obligations would override or stack on top of state rate making. That's a distinction with direct consequences for how cost allocation provisions get written into service agreements right now, before the FERC order drops and before any legislation moves.

SPEAKER_01

The one to watch today is that FERC end of June large load order running alongside Guthrie's legislative push. You have two parallel tracks, a federal regulatory order and potential federal statute, both aimed at the same cost causation problem. If FERC moves first and Congress follows with something that preempts or modifies it, public power utilities caught in the middle of active data center negotiations are holding service agreements written against a framework that may shift underneath them.

SPEAKER_00

And the timing is genuinely tight. FERC's order could drop any day in the next two weeks. If you have data center load inquiries in your queue, the cost allocation language in those service agreements needs to be stress tested against both what FERC is likely to require and what the statutory version could look like. Those two things may not land in the same place.

SPEAKER_01

The through line today is federal intervention on multiple fronts: emergency reliability orders, court-restored grants, dropped litigation, and now parallel legislative and regulatory tracks on large load cost allocation. The Pacific Northwest hydro shortfall is the backdrop for all of it this summer.

SPEAKER_00

Busy federal calendar with real operational stakes. Stay close to your resource planning teams on the Centralia and Hydro numbers, and get eyes on those data center service agreements before the FERC order lands. That's your NWPPA morning brief for Tuesday, June 16th, 2026. Sources for every story are linked in the show notes. We'll be back tomorrow morning. Keep the lights on.