U.S. Energy and Interior Secretaries Urge PJM to Revise Market Rules to Boost Grid Reliability and Control Power Costs

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on Tuesday joined governors from the Mid-Atlantic region in calling on PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. to temporarily revise its electricity market rules to strengthen grid reliability and curb rising power costs.

The initiative, led through the National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC)—chaired by Burgum and vice-chaired by Wright—urges PJM to conduct an emergency procurement auction aimed at enabling the development of more than $15 billion worth of reliable baseload power generation across the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

According to officials, the move is intended to address escalating electricity prices and growing reliability risks, which they attribute to past PJM policies that led to the early retirement of reliable power generation assets.

The call for reform follows President Donald Trump’s declaration of a National Energy Emergency on his first day in office. The administration has argued that previous energy policies weakened the power grid, increased electricity prices, and heightened the risk of blackouts. During the Biden administration, nearly 17 gigawatts of baseload generation were retired within PJM’s footprint, officials said.

For the first time, PJM’s most recent capacity auction failed to procure sufficient generation resources to meet basic reliability requirements, raising concerns about future supply shortages, higher prices, and grid instability.

“High electricity prices are a choice,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, adding that the closure of coal- and gas-fired power plants without reliable replacements contributed to the current energy challenges. Wright said the proposed reforms would help restore affordable and dependable electricity while supporting U.S. manufacturing and economic growth.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the initiative aims to reverse what he described as policies of energy scarcity and ensure reliable power for households and industries across the Mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest. He also emphasized that new power plants needed to support artificial intelligence and data center growth should be funded by technology companies rather than taxpayers.

Key Recommendations

The proposed measures include:

-Long-term revenue certainty: Providing 15-year revenue guarantees for new power plants to accelerate the development of reliable generation.

-Residential rate protection: Limiting capacity market payments to existing power plants to protect household electricity rates.

-Cost allocation for data centers: Requiring data centers to bear a larger share of costs for new generation unless they self-procure capacity or agree to curtail usage.

-Immediate grid stability actions: Implementing additional steps to ensure secure, affordable, and reliable electricity supply.

Officials said the recommendations are intended as temporary but critical interventions to support electricity reliability in some of the country’s most manufacturing-intensive regions, while managing rising demand driven by data centers.

Looking ahead, the administration noted that America’s industrial expansion, advanced manufacturing growth, and leadership in the global artificial intelligence sector will require significantly more around-the-clock, uninterrupted power, underscoring the need for new reliable generation capacity.