NWPPA Morning Brief

NWPPA Morning Brief - Monday, June 22, 2026

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NWPPA Morning Brief — Monday, June 22, 2026

In today's brief:

Top Federal Developments

Top Regional / State Developments

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

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SPEAKER_01

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, a new hydropower relicensing reform bill with strong public power backing. DOE extends coal emergency orders to more Midwestern plants. FERC moves on gas pipeline environmental reviews and large load interconnection. A second advanced reactor goes critical in Utah. Maryland legislators file a major data center cost complaint at FERC. BC Hydro breaks ground on Revelstoke Unit 6. Sun Zia reaches full operation. XL seeks a coal extension in Colorado, wildfires in eastern Washington, and insurance stress in Nevada. And Lake Powell is closing in on the minimum power pool threshold. 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_00

The story I want to flag first is the Hydropower Licensing Affordability Act. This bill goes directly at the cost and litigation exposure that makes non-federal hydro relicensing one of the most financially unpredictable processes public power utilities face. With 16,000 megawatts currently pending renewal and 451 licenses expiring between now and 2035, the window for getting this right is not abstract. It's the next decade of generation certainty for utilities across the Columbia Basin.

SPEAKER_01

And the APPA endorsement is not ceremonial. When Scott Corwin says existing hydrocapacity is at risk without reform, that framing is designed to move votes in a Congress that is otherwise not moving fast on anything energy related.

SPEAKER_00

Let's get into it. The Bence Bill amends two Federal Power Act sections that sit at the heart of every nonfederal hydro relicensing fight. Section 4E lets federal agencies attach non-negotiable operating conditions to hydro licenses. Section 18 lets agencies prescribe fish passage facilities. The bill would require those mandatory conditions be reasonable and tied to a project's direct adverse effects, that is, a material constraint on agency discretion that current law does not impose. For utilities holding or contracting from non-federal hydro, that language shift changes the negotiating posture from the start of a relicensing proceeding.

SPEAKER_01

The co-sponsored geography tells you something too. Washington, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Colorado, that is the NWPPA footprint. This bill is not a national bill that happens to touch hydro. It is a Western public power bill wearing a national frame. The question is whether it moves in this Congress or becomes a negotiating chip in a broader energy package.

SPEAKER_00

Moving to the DOE coal orders, Energy Secretary Wright on June 18th issued emergency orders under Federal Power Act Section 202C, the provision that lets DOE order specific plants to keep running past their planned retirement, directing Northern Indiana Public Service Company and Center Point Energy to keep units at two Indiana coal stations available through September 19th. This is the same authority DOE used on Centralia Unit 2 and Orlando Utilities Commission earlier this spring, different utilities and different grid operator, but the same legal mechanism and the same pattern. Coal retirements blocked ahead of peak demand. These orders also reflect the administration's preference for keeping coal capacity online, and the open question remains whether aging, near-retired units can reliably generate at scale when actually called upon.

SPEAKER_01

For Western utilities, the precedent question is direct. If DOE is willing to use 202C authority in MISO, the evidentiary threshold for doing the same thing in the Western interconnection is now being established in real time. Any Western coal unit on a retirement path should be watching what record DOE is building to justify these orders.

SPEAKER_00

Turning to FERC's action on gas pipeline reviews, FERC voted to eliminate the requirement that pipeline applicants prepare cumulative impact analyses under NEPA. Those are the portions of an environmental review that add up a project's effects together with the effects of other past and reasonably foreseeable projects in the area. The Commission cited a recent Supreme Court ruling narrowing NEPA's scope. The practical result is a shorter, narrower environmental review for new interstate gas pipelines.

SPEAKER_01

Shorter timelines for upstream pipeline approvals is the operational upside for utilities planning gas-fired resources. The flip side is real, though. Narrower reviews give project opponents a cleaner litigation target. The question of what NEPA still requires after this vote is going to be litigated, and that uncertainty lands in the same approval timeline utilities were hoping to compress.

SPEAKER_00

Next up, FERC's Large Load Interconnection Showcause Orders. At the same June 18th meeting, FERC unanimously issued tailored showcause orders, formal directives requiring each recipient to either justify its current practices or propose reforms to six regional grid operators on how data centers and large energy users connect to the transmission grid. The five focus areas are process efficiency, cost transparency, co-location agreements, new services for flexible large loads, and study requirements for generators serving large loads. CAISO and SPP are on that list alongside the Eastern RTOs.

SPEAKER_01

For Western public power utilities already fielding data center interconnection requests, this establishes a federal floor. Your process has to be structured to meet these standards, or FERC will require reforms. That is not a maybe. It is a compliance timeline in the making.

SPEAKER_00

Shifting to the advanced reactor front, Valar Atomics Ward 250 reactor achieved zero power criticality at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab on June 18th, meaning it sustained a controlled nuclear chain reaction at minimal power output, a development milestone, not commercial operation. It is the second milestone under the DOE reactor pilot program and the first DOE authorized reactor built outside a national laboratory.

SPEAKER_01

The Utah location is the operational signal here. The DOE pilot pathway working at a non-national lab site is the deployment model utilities would actually use. Commercial timelines are still undefined, but Western public power utilities tracking SMR options now have a proof of concept executed in their region.

SPEAKER_00

Over to the Maryland Data Center cost complaint. 80 Maryland state legislators filed comments at FERC supporting the state ratepayer advocate's complaint, arguing Maryland customers will pay $1.6 billion over the next decade for transmission upgrades primarily benefiting out-of-state data centers in Northern Virginia. The core argument is that current cost allocation rules, the beneficiary pays framework requiring those who benefit from a transmission upgrade to share its cost, disproportionately burden states adjacent to data center clusters.

SPEAKER_01

Western Public Power should be studying this proceeding closely. CAISO and WEC are actively wrestling with who pays for transmission built to serve concentrated large load growth. If FERC revisits beneficiary pays principles in PJM, the precedent lands here too. This is not an eastern problem.

SPEAKER_00

Moving to the regional picture, BC Hydro has broken ground on a sixth generating unit at the Revel Stoke Generating Station on the Columbia River, adding 500 megawatts. The broader package, including modernization at the GM Schrum Generating Station at the WAC Bennett Dam, and upgrades at Micah, Seven Mile, Kooteny Canal, and other facilities, adds more than 1,000 megawatts to the British Columbia system total.

SPEAKER_01

An additional gigawatt of dispatchable BC hydro capacity coming online over the next several years is material for long-term planning across the Northwest. It affects mid-sea pricing dynamics and the Bonneville Power Administration's balancing picture. This is not a project to track. It is a resource adequacy input that belongs in your IRP assumptions now.

SPEAKER_00

Turning to Sunzia, Pattern Energy declared the $11 billion Sunzia project fully operational on June 19th. 3,650 megawatts of New Mexico wind paired with a 550-mile high voltage transmission line into Arizona and California. The largest renewable energy infrastructure project completed in U.S. history by capacity.

SPEAKER_01

For Northwest sellers moving power south, Sunzia adds substantial new firm transmission capacity into the desert Southwest and California markets. Congestion patterns on shared paths shift, and the economics of bilateral contracts between Pacific Northwest sellers and Southwest buyers are in a different competitive environment now.

SPEAKER_00

The other Colorado story today is Excel's request to extend operations at its Comanche coal plant, citing reliability concerns. Colorado regulators just issued a 92-page ruling pushing back on Excel's separate $567 million gas infrastructure proposal, telling the company it had not adequately accounted for how the state's clean heat plan, which requires 22% emissions cuts from gas utilities by 2030, reduces the need for new pipeline build-out. Colorado Springs Utilities received a similar coal extension recently, putting public power and investor-owned operators on parallel tracks before the same commission.

SPEAKER_01

The stranded cost and resource adequacy questions here are running simultaneously at the Colorado PUC, and the Commission is clearly not rubber stamping either. How Colorado resolves the coal extension and gas infrastructure tension is a leading indicator for similar proceedings across the West.

SPEAKER_00

On the wildfire front, a wind-driven fire in Spokane County forced roughly 1,500 evacuations and destroyed at least 15 homes. Eastern Washington hosts major Bonneville Power Administration, transmission corridors, and multiple public power service territories. For utilities with assets or service territory in the fire footprint, line patrols, de-energization decisions, and mutual aid coordination are the immediate operational questions.

SPEAKER_01

And the broader season signal matters. This fire comes after a below-normal water year, and the 2026 fire season is shaping up accordingly. Separately, Nevada is seeing home insurance cancellations tied to wildfire risk spreading into Henderson and Las Vegas, with insurers apparently applying California-derived risk models to Nevada properties. For Western public power utilities, that insurance market stress increases political pressure to demonstrate aggressive wildfire mitigation and adds to the affordability picture in which your rates are set.

SPEAKER_00

On pricing, Front Month Henry Hub Natural Gas Futures were trading at $3.28 per million BTU on June 22nd, up from $3.20. NYMEX WTI Front Month Crude Futures were trading at $74.83 per barrel, down from $6.51.

SPEAKER_01

For Western spot prices on June 18th delivery, SUMUS Natural Gas was $1.35 per million BTU. Mid-Columbia power was $30 per megawatt hour. On the capital side, the 10-year treasury yield was 4.49% on June 17th, up from 4.43%. Comex Copper settled at $6.38 per pound on June 21st.

SPEAKER_00

One to watch, and this is the one I'd want in front of every CEO with WAPA Desert Southwest Exposure. Lake Powell is tracking near elevation 3,527 feet. Minimum power pool, the point below which Glen Canyon Dam can no longer generate power is 3,490 feet. The Central Arizona Project's Colorado River Dashboard shows system storage at 20.33 million acre feet as of late May, down from 23.38 million the prior year, and basin snowpack above Powell came in at 23% of the 30-year median. That is not a system with a comfortable buffer heading into peak summer demand.

SPEAKER_01

The NWRFC June 21st forecast also shows the Columbia River at Bonneville Dam at 83% of average and the Snake River at Lower Granite Dam at 70% of average for the April through September period. The Northwest picture is below average. The Colorado River picture is deteriorating. Western hydro exposure is not a single point risk right now. It is layered.

SPEAKER_00

Today's briefing had a clear through line. Federal authority is being actively deployed to reshape the cost and risk structure of Western energy infrastructure, from hydro relicensing to gas pipelines to large load interconnection. The Powell trajectory and the Spokane Wildfire are reminders that the operational calendar does not wait for the regulatory calendar to catch up.

SPEAKER_01

The Bence Bill and the Maryland Data Center complaint are both early innings. Watch whether either gains traction in the next 60 days. That timing will tell you a lot about what the rest of this Congress is actually willing to move. That's your NWPPA morning brief for Monday, June 22nd, 2026. Sources for every story are linked in the show notes. We'll be back tomorrow morning. Keep the lights on.