Sacramento, CA – A bipartisan group of governors are threatening to leave the East Coast grid operator PJM unless they get the right to appoint board members and the right to file tariffs with FERC.
The bill that Governor Newsom signed last week to have California participate in a Western grid, AB 825, denies California the right to appoint board members to the board of the regional operator or to file tariffs with FERC.
Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin are among those demanding a say or threatening to walk, according to reporting by Utility Dive.
“If PJM refuses to change, we will be forced to go in a different direction,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said. “That is not a path that I am eager to chart, but I am not willing to stand idly by and let PJM dictate our future.”
“This is a crisis of not having enough power, and it is a crisis in confidence,” Youngkin said. “It’s this crisis that demands real reform, real reform immediately — and at the top of the list is that states must have a real say.”
11 governors whose states are part of PJM are negotiating for greater governance rights. Meanwhile, AB 825 contemplates no such power for California as backers rejected those amendments meant to protect state sovereignty.
“Governor Newsom and the legislature have totally ignored the sovereignty concerns of a bipartisan group of governors in their haste to pass this eleventh hour bill,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “The legislature needs to revisit the governance issues if California is to have any power to fight back against the type of escalating electricity prices that have sent these East Coast governors into open revolt. Why California would give up its sovereignty to a group of self-interested power traders and Trump’s FERC without checks and balances is the question the legislature needs to continue to ask in 2026. We need to learn from the experiences of other states or we will fall into the same trap.”
