U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), and Jim Risch (R-Idaho) have introduced the Hydropower Licensing Affordability Act to the Senate, which would reform the Federal Power Act (FPA) in an effort to reduce delays and costs of hydropower licensing.
Specifically, the bill would limit Section 4 (e) and Section 18 mandatory conditioning of hydropower licenses under the Federal Power Act to those conditions that are related to “direct adverse effects” of the project.
Currently, natural resource agencies can require mandatory conditions that must be met for the project to proceed, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) cannot reject them “regardless of cost, impact, or whether the condition is directly relevant to the project,” notes the American Public Power Association.
The senators supporting the bill note that 40% of hydropower in the U.S. is up for relicensing by 2030, arguing that the nation’s hydropower fleet is threatened by “burdensome, lengthy, and expensive” relicensing. Additionally, they argue that new generation is becoming uneconomical due to permitting delays and litigation threats.
“Throughout my time in the Senate, I have heard the same message from Alaska’s utilities and local leaders: the hydropower relicensing process is broken,” said Murkowski. “We need to address the unwarranted delays and costly federal requirements that often bear little connection to a project’s direct impacts. Those burdens make it much harder to maintain and expand one of Alaska’s most reliable sources of renewable, baseload power. By ensuring mandatory licensing conditions are tied to a project’s direct adverse effects, this legislation will provide greater regulatory certainty, reduce unnecessary costs, and help keep electricity affordable and reliable for Alaskans.”
The senators also stressed that while Congress would need to work through permitting reform, federal agencies can take steps in the meantime to bolster hydropower. They wrote a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of Commerce (DOC) urging support and action on these reforms. The letter urges the agencies to:
- Limit mandatory conditions to those that address direct effects of a project,
- Limit the scope of the project area to its immediate vicinity,
- Define ‘fishway’ to clarify that prescribed structures are intended only to address direct impacts to fish passage;
- Require conditions to be backed by the “best available science,”
- Require agencies to provide a statement with any conditions that demonstrates equal consideration to the effects of the condition “on energy supply, distribution, cost, and use; flood control; navigation; water supply; and air quality (in addition to the preservation of other aspects of environmental quality),” as required in Section 33, and
- Ensure that conditions are not “overly burdensome or costly.”
In the letter, the senators argue that while the FPA allows federal resource management agencies like the DOI, USDA, and DOC to impose mandatory conditions for hydropower licenses, these conditions have become “increasingly complex, expensive, and often unrelated to the direct effects of the project.” These conditions, the senators say, are contributing to the decline of domestic hydropower production.
Congressman Cliff Bentz (R-OR) introduced the companion bill (H.R. 9337) in the House last month, which APPA, along with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the Edison Electric Institute.
