NWPPA Morning Brief

NWPPA Morning Brief - Friday, June 26, 2026

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NWPPA Morning Brief — Friday, June 26, 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_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, Utah officials sound the alarm on Colorado River water shortages with direct hydropower implications. The House moves toward a floor vote on the FY 2027 Energy Water Bill. Northwestern Energy files a large load tariff to keep data center costs off existing customers. Washington links its carbon market to California and Quebec, and TVA's new IRP reveals a planning uncertainty range that should stop every Western resource planner in their tracks. Today's briefing is brought to you by NWPPA's Women in Public Power Conference, July 28th to 30th in Santa Rosa, California. Three days of connection, candid conversation, and community by and for the women of public power. Register at nwppa.org.

SPEAKER_00

The Utah-Colorado River story is the one that deserves full attention this morning. When a state engineer is curtailing senior water rights dating back to 1886, that is not a policy debate. That is a physical system running out of water. The Lake Powell hydropower implications for Western utilities are real, and they compound with every week of underperforming inflows.

SPEAKER_01

And the timing matters. Upper basin curtailments happening now interact directly with Bureau of Reclamation Reservoir Operations heading into the back half of summer. Any utility with Colorado River System hydropower exposure needs this on the resource adequacy checklist today.

SPEAKER_00

Let's start with the federal picture. The FY 2027 Energy Water Appropriations Bill is headed to the House floor this week. This sets annual funding for the dam-owning agencies, the Army Corps, and the Bureau of Reclamation, which directly affects capital project timing and program capacity on the federal power marketing side. WAPA's budget is also in play. A house-passed bill is not law, but it locks in the Republican opening position before conference with the Senate.

SPEAKER_01

The Senate side is where the tension lives. Senate appropriators are rolling out their FY 2027 bills the same week after partisan divisions killed earlier markups. That gap between chambers is going to take time to close, and continuing resolutions have real operational consequences for federal infrastructure programs. Utilities that depend on WAPA or coordinate with BPA on capital work should watch the conference dynamics carefully.

SPEAKER_00

Moving to the MISO transmission dispute. American Transmission Company filed a complaint at FERC asking the agency to order MISO to rebid a $350 million power line and four substation project in southeastern Wisconsin. The core allegation is that MISO awarded the project to a developer with a 2033 in-service date, even though three of those substations are needed years earlier to serve a major data center. ATC says MISO also underweighted rate relief benefits offered by its partners, Dairyland Power and WPPI Energy, both public power entities, while leaning too heavily on top-line cost.

SPEAKER_01

The in-service date mismatch is the sharper issue here. If FERC engages on that question, it signals how RTOs should handle competitive transmission bids where large load timing needs don't line up with the winning developer's schedule. Western utilities watching how their own transmission planning processes handle data center interconnection should track FERC's response closely.

SPEAKER_00

On the federal lands front, BLM authorized the Pearl Geothermal Development Project in Esmeralda County, Nevada, using a 14-day environmental review, bypassing the standard multi-year NEPA process. That's the administration's accelerated permitting pattern applied to geothermal. For Great Basin utilities, shorter development cycles on geothermal resources are operationally useful. The durability question is whether these expedited reviews survive litigation, which has a way of stretching timelines right back out.

SPEAKER_01

The transmission corridor implication is worth flagging separately. If that same accelerated review framework applies to federal land transmission routes, that changes the calculus on projects that have been stalled waiting for NEPA clearance. Western utilities with pending federal land infrastructure need to watch whether BLM extends this approach beyond generation.

SPEAKER_00

Turning to the Northwestern Energy Tariff filing, Northwestern filed a proposed large new load tariff with the Montana Public Service Commission that would require new customers with loads of five megawatts or greater to pay the full costs of the infrastructure they trigger, including upfront payments for upgrades and surcharges for further capacity needs. The filing is driven by data center proposals in the pipeline, including one near Missoula.

SPEAKER_01

The structure is a direct application of the cost causation principle, the idea that customers who drive new infrastructure costs should bear them. That is the same framework public power utilities across the West are building into their own large load policies. What the Montana PSC decides here becomes a regional reference point, and a commission ruling that endorses or rejects this structure will carry weight in other states and at the federal level as the Ratepayer Protection Act works through Congress.

SPEAKER_00

Shifting to the carbon market story, Washington, California, and Quebec signed a formal linkage agreement joining Washington's Cap and Invest program with the existing California-Quebec market. For public power utilities with compliance obligations under Washington's Climate Commitment Act, this is not an abstract policy milestone. Allowance prices, auction dynamics, and offset rules in the combined market now drive compliance costs in Washington.

SPEAKER_01

The price convergence question is the one to watch. California's allowance prices have historically run higher than Washington's. A larger linked market can reduce volatility, but if prices converge toward the California level, Washington side utilities are looking at higher compliance costs over time. The implementation timeline and any transition provisions will determine how fast that pressure arrives on rates.

SPEAKER_00

Over to Envy Energy, the company issued public safety outage management watches, advanced notices of potential proactive line de-energizations tied to forecast fire weather across parts of northern Nevada, including East Elko, Spring Creek, and South Carson areas. The Elko and Spring Creek watch window runs Saturday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., with roughly 8,200 customers potentially in scope across those two areas.

SPEAKER_01

PSPS style protocols are standard summer operating practice now across the dry interior west. For neighboring public power utilities in Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, and California, this is a reminder to confirm that their own proactive de-energization frameworks are current and that customer communication protocols are ready for a fire weather season that is already active.

SPEAKER_00

Back to the Colorado River. Utah Colorado River Commissioner Gene Shawcroft warned at the Upper Colorado River Commission that the state engineer has already curtailed senior water rights dating to 1886 on Ashley Creek and to 1906 on the Duchesne River. Peak spring runoff on some streams came in at 257 cubic feet per second against a normal 1,200. Some towns are running out of water. A small mountain reservoir was projected to empty by June 29th.

SPEAKER_01

When you are curtailing the oldest, highest priority water rights on a system, you have crossed from shortage management into something more fundamental. For Western public power utilities with Colorado River hydropower exposure, the operational question is how Upper Basin curtailments interact with Bureau of Reclamation Reservoir Operations at Lake Powell as inflows continue to underperform. This is not a situation where the signal is ambiguous.

SPEAKER_00

On the pricing front, Front Month Henry Hub Natural Gas Futures were trading at $3.38 per million BTU on June 26th, up from $3.27. NYMEX WTI Front Month Crude Futures were trading at $69.70 per barrel on June 26th, down from $69.76.

SPEAKER_01

Western spot prices for delivery June 25 from EIA. SUMUS Natural Gas at $1.50 per million BTU. Mid-Columbia Power at $11.92 per megawatt hour. The 10-year Treasury yield was 4.41% on June 24th, down from 4.50%. COMEX Copper settled at $6.18 per pound on June 25th, up from $6.07.

SPEAKER_00

Next up, the Data Center Legislation Scan. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee advanced the Rate Payer Protection Act, the bill that would require states to consider a federal standard ensuring large power customers cover 100% of new generation and transmission upgrade costs, though states could reject that standard. The wrinkle is that ranking member Frank Pallone called for a full national moratorium on new data center development, exposing real partisan fault lines. Google and Microsoft have endorsed the bill. Full committee vote and Senate path are both uncertain.

SPEAKER_01

The moratorium call is going to slow this down. There is now a visible gap between the bipartisan cost causation framework in the bill and where some Democrats want to go. For public power utilities, the cost causation principle in this bill aligns directly with what Northwestern just filed in Montana. But the legislative path is harder than it looked a week ago.

SPEAKER_00

Turning to the TVA IRP, the Tennessee Valley Authority's preliminary 2026 Integrated Resource Plan shows actual and forecast load growth already outpacing the reference case and approaching the higher growth scenario, driven by data centers and AI facilities. TVA's incremental capacity need through 2040, 7 to 26 gigawatts of new natural gas, up to 5 gigawatts of nuclear, 1 to 5 gigawatts of storage, and 2 to 5 gigawatts of renewables. That 7 to 26 gigawatt gas range is among the widest planning bands any major U.S. utility has published.

SPEAKER_01

The federal utility comparison is the signal. TVA sits outside organized markets and internalizes resource adequacy risk directly. The same position BPA and public power utilities across the West occupy. When a federal utility with TVA's planning resources publishes a 19 gigawatt uncertainty band on a single resource type, that tells you something about the honesty of anyone presenting a tight demand forecast tied to data center load. Western public power planners building their own IRPs around data center assumptions should take that range seriously.

SPEAKER_00

For the one to watch, the Colorado River situation warrants the designation this week. What makes this different from the normal Lake Powell narrative is the state-level escalation. Utah curtailing 1886 senior water rights is not a model output. It is a physical event happening now, and it is happening upstream of the reservoirs that feed Western hydropower generation. The Bureau of Reclamation's next set of 24-month study projections will be the clearest forward signal, but the current inflow data is already the answer for this summer.

SPEAKER_01

Utilities with any Colorado River system hydropower in their resource stack should be stress testing their summer capacity positions against a scenario where that output is reduced further. The curtailment of senior rights in Utah is a leading indicator, not a lagging one. The time to model the downside is before the Bureau updates its projections, not after.

SPEAKER_00

Today's briefing has a clear thread. Physical water, cost allocation for new load, and the widening gap between demand forecasts and planning certainty. The Utah story is the most time-sensitive. The TVA IRP is the most clarifying on long-term uncertainty, and the Northwestern tariff filing and federal legislation together show that the cost causation principle is gaining real traction, but the policy path is still being fought state by state.

SPEAKER_01

Take the Colorado River signal seriously this weekend. The rest of the summer is going to be shaped by what happens to those inflows over the next 60 days. That's your NWPPA morning brief for Friday, June 26, 2026. Sources for every story are linked in the show notes. Have a great weekend. Keep the lights on.