Overview
- At a White House event, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and a bipartisan group of governors backed a statement urging PJM to run an emergency wholesale auction this year.
- The proposal would let tech companies bid on 15-year capacity contracts and require them to pay for the full allotment even if unused, a structure expected to support about $15 billion in new generation.
- The backers also called for extending a cap on PJM’s wholesale capacity payments to temper consumer bill increases across the 13-state market.
- PJM said it was not invited and would not attend the event, and later outlined its own measures, including pushing large data centers to secure dedicated supply or face curtailments during peak demand.
- Any auction would depend on PJM governance and FERC approval, and even on a hoped-for timeline by late September it would still face interconnection, permitting and construction hurdles before easing prices.