Today, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Sierra Club that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission properly issued Order 2023—an order that directs grid operators to address longstanding delays with interconnection queues and speed up the process. Order 2023 required critical reforms to add more clean energy to the electricity grid. Sierra Club has engaged in defense of Order 2023 since its passage. Due to years of poor planning, opaque study processes, and inability to address significant study delays, grid operators accumulated a backlog of projects that have been waiting for years to get connected to the grid. 95 percent of these projects stuck in the backlog are wind, solar, or batteries. FERC’s Order 2023 directed grid operators to address these long-standing backlogs and provide a pathway to meaningful interconnection queue reform. Despite progress made on interconnection queues through the Order, many grid operators have undermined their own queues with “fast track” alternate queue processes. Sierra Club has been challenging these illegal fast tracks that underscore the current fossil favoritism agenda across grid operators in the country. In response, Sierra Club Senior Attorney Justin Vickers issued the following statement: “We are celebrating today’s court ruling as a boon to getting low-cost clean energy online. Despite relentless attacks from the administration and their fossil fuel executive allies, the courts have upheld a meaningful reform to address longstanding imbalances in delayed and lengthy generation study processes. This win will give Americans access to more reliable, affordable, clean energy, which continues to outperform fossil fuels in both cost and reliability. “We are sick of procedural and systemic barriers to technologies that would lower bills, lower emissions, and contribute to grid reliability. FERC Order 2023 offers one pathway to alleviate these types of barriers, and we are eager to continue to support many more.”
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