Congress moved four energy bills in three days; one goes to the President

Between September 15 and 17, 2026, four energy bills each cleared a chamber of Congress, per the bill status records linked under each item: three passed the House under suspension of the rules, and one the House had passed in July 2025 cleared the Senate without amendment and went to the President. None of the four builds, buys, or funds anything; each orders a report, a rulemaking, a set of study boards, or a state proceeding. Recorded opposition across the four votes: three members.

Hydropower Licensing Transparency Act (H.R. 3657): to the President

Per the bill status record, the Senate passed H.R. 3657 without amendment by unanimous consent on September 16, 2026; the House had passed it, as amended, by voice vote on July 14, 2025, and the record shows it presented to the President on September 17.

The enrolled text adds a section 37 to the Federal Power Act: within 180 days of enactment and annually after that, FERC submits to Congress a report on the status of each new license, and each subsequent license for which sections 14 and 15 have been waived, for which the existing licensee gave notice of intent at least three years before the report and no license has yet issued, and of each original license under section 4(e) for which a citizen, association, corporation, State, Indian Tribe, or municipality gave a similar notice. The six inclusions for each covered process run from the date of the notice and any docket number assigned, through whether an application has been filed and its status including the date the Commission anticipates issuing the license, to a description of ongoing or completed actions required of the existing licensee, citizen, association, corporation, State, Indian Tribe, municipality, the Commission, the fish and wildlife agencies, and any other agencies. The act asks FERC to tell Congress, for each covered process, the date it anticipates issuing the license; it sets no date by which any license must issue.

The National Hydropower Association applauded the passage; its release says 348 hydropower permits representing over 12,000 MW of capacity are due for relicensing over the next decade.

Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340): 417 to 3

The House passed H.R. 9340, as amended, by 417 to 3 on September 16, 2026, per the bill status record; the Senate received it on September 17. The sponsor is Rep. Gabe Evans (R-CO).

The House-passed text adds a paragraph (22) to section 111(d) of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978: a rate for serving a large-load customer is designed to recover from that customer "the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve the load," including if the customer terminates its contract or stops buying, and the utility requires financial assurances or contributions covering the upgrade before making it. A large-load customer is a non-residential consumer that, on or after enactment, requests to enter into or enters into a contract or other agreement for the sale of electric energy for facilities that require electricity primarily to operate information technology infrastructure and related systems for data storage and computational applications and services and that have, in the aggregate, a peak demand of 100 MW or more at a single site or campus. As with other PURPA section 111 standards, state regulators and nonregulated electric utilities decide whether to adopt it: each has one year from enactment to begin considering the standard and two years to determine, with an exemption where the state has already implemented a comparable standard, the regulator or nonregulated utility has already held a proceeding to consider one, or the legislature has voted on one. An overlapping class of load is in front of PJM, which proposed ride-through rules for data centers on September 8, 2026, after a July 22, 2026 fault in the Dominion zone.

High-Capacity Grid Act (H.R. 6633): voice vote, and a rewrite

The House passed H.R. 6633, as amended, by voice vote on September 15, 2026, and the Senate received it on September 16, per the bill status record. The sponsor, Rep. Julie Fedorchak (R-ND), says in her release that the bill passed unanimously and that "we must optimize our existing transmission infrastructure."

The House-passed text adds a section 224 to the Federal Power Act under which FERC, exercising its sections 205 and 206 authority, requires public utilities to use conductors designated in a best-available transmission conductor class for covered projects: a new FERC-jurisdictional transmission facility that includes a conductor, or any major, as the Commission determines, modification, upgrade, replacement, or reconductoring of an existing conductor. FERC has one year to issue regulations, including a designation methodology set with the Secretary of Energy on energy-carrying capacity and electrical efficiency at a given voltage level and on mechanical performance, taking into account reliability, safety, and affordability, each at the greatest feasible and commercially available level. Four exemptions cover projects permitted or with conductors procured before enactment, emergency repairs, conflicts with safety or a reliability standard, and a demonstrated significant cost-per-kilowatt-hour increase without a material and commensurate gain in capacity, efficiency, or mechanical performance.

A comparison with the text as introduced on December 11, 2025 shows the committee rewrote the mechanism: the introduced bill created two presumptions in cost-recovery proceedings, that a best-available conductor is prudent and its costs just and reasonable and that any other conductor is not. The House-passed text replaces the presumptions with the requirement and exemptions above, while the bill's long title still reads "to provide for presumptions regarding cost recovery for such conductors."

Load Forecasting Enhancement Act (H.R. 9332): voice vote

The House passed H.R. 9332 by voice vote on September 15, 2026, and the Senate received it on September 16, per the bill status record. The sponsor is Rep. Troy Balderson (R-OH), and Balderson's release calls the vote unanimous.

The House-passed text gives FERC 90 days from enactment to establish regions that together include every state, each with a joint board of one representative per state commission in the region and one FERC commissioner as chair. Each board studies eight listed matters, including an evaluation of service requests from industrial or commercial facilities with large loads, including whether those facilities have made financial commitments to a utility, and reports best practices to FERC, which reports to Congress within one year of enactment. The bill also adds a PURPA section 111(d) standard, its own paragraph (22), under which the procedures used to forecast electric loads incorporate FERC's recommendations. This bill and the Ratepayer Protection Act each add a new paragraph (22) to the same PURPA subsection.