Montana Republican Steve Daines and Washington Republican Rep. Dan Newhouse are pushing House leaders to take up legislation to address hydropower licensing concerns.
S. 1020 would allow projects that had Federal Energy Regulatory Commission licenses issued before 2020 to petition the agency to extend their permit for an additional six years, in two-year increments. The bill cleared the Senate via unanimous consent in July.
“If S. 1020 is not enacted, 37 unconstructed, FERC-licensed hydropower projects across 15 states, representing more than 2.6GW of baseload power and $6.5 billion in investment, are at risk of termination,” Daines and Newhouse wrote in a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
“Losing these projects would undermine grid reliability at a time when we can least afford it,” they added in the letter released on Tuesday.
