On April 8, 2025, President Donald Trump issued the Strengthening the Reliability and Security of the U.S. Electric Grid executive order aimed at ensuring adequate and reliable electric generation in the U.S., meeting growing electricity demand being driven by technological advancements (e.g., data centers), and addressing the national energy emergency declared on January 20, 2025. The executive order also intends to help ensure that the electrical grid leverages all available power generation resources, with a particular emphasis on secure resources that have redundant fuel supplies to support extended operations.
Section 3 of the executive order outlines steps that the Secretary of Energy must take in the event of forecasted grid interruptions to prevent grid failure and to safeguard the reliability and security of the United States’ electric grid during such forecasted periods. Section 3 mandates that the Secretary of Energy streamline and expedite the Department of Energy’s procedures for issuing orders under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act (“FPA”). This expedited scheme includes approving applications for electric generation facilities seeking to operate at maximum capacity.
Section 3 also tasks the Secretary of Energy, within 30 days of this executive order, to develop a methodology for analyzing current and anticipated reserve margins in the FERC-regulated power system. The executive order explains that this methodology will be used to identify current and anticipated regions with reserve margins below acceptable thresholds, as the Secretary of Energy identified. The methodology focuses on the following: (1) analyzing sufficiently varied grid conditions and operating scenarios based on historical events to adequately inform the methodology; (2) accrediting generation resources in such conditions and scenarios based on the historical performance of each specific generation resource type in the real-time conditions and operating scenarios of each grid scenario; and (3) publishing the outlined information, along with any analysis it produces, on the Department of Energy’s website within 90 days of this executive order.
Finally, the Secretary of Energy must establish a process to identify regional generation resources within a region that are critical to system reliability using Section 202(c) of the FPA. This protocol aims to prevent an identified generation resource over 50 megawatts of nameplate capacity from leaving the bulk-power system or converting the fuel source (if conversion would reduce generating capacity).
The executive order can be found here.