Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Sean Casten (IL-06)
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Congressman Sean Casten (IL-06) introduced the Shared Utility Rewards for Grid Efficiency (SURGE) Act, legislation to lower bills for American energy consumers by realigning transmission utility incentives with customer cost savings and rewarding improvements in grid efficiency.
“One of the most impactful things we can do to lower costs for American consumers is to give utility companies an incentive to save their customers money and lower emissions at the same time,” said Rep. Sean Casten. “The SURGE Act does just that by realigning utility incentives so utilities are rewarded for making their systems more efficient, lowering energy bills in the process.”
“Modernizing our power grid has never been more essential for affordability, reliability, and meeting our climate goals,” said John Moore, Senior Attorney and Director of the Sustainable FERC Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “By authorizing innovative federal and state shared-savings standards, the SURGE bill ensures that proven solutions like advanced conductors and grid-enhancing technologies are deployed at scale—saving billions of dollars in energy costs, cutting pollution, and strengthening our clean energy future.”
“The SURGE Act represents a pragmatic, forward-looking approach to modernizing the electric grid,” said Exelon. “Exelon fully supports actions that utilize proven innovations to deliver a more affordable, reliable and resilient grid. Representative Casten offers a smart shared savings pathway to accelerate grid modernization while ensuring consumers benefit.”
Under current ratemaking, utilities earn returns mainly by building new infrastructure, even when lower-cost operational or efficiency improvements could deliver equal or greater system value. The SURGE Act addresses this misalignment by directing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to establish a standardized “shared savings” framework that allows transmission utilities to earn a portion of the real, verified savings they deliver to ratepayers through specific actions. This means that if ratepayers do not see savings from a utility’s action, the utility does not receive the incentive.
The SURGE Act also creates a state-level grant program, run out of the Department of Energy, so states that want to create their own shared savings framework for their grid can get the technical support they need to design and implement it.
The opportunity for savings to ratepayers is significant. Research from GridStrategies shows that deploying advanced conductors, one of the solutions advanced by this legislation, could prevent roughly 21 million MWh of annual transmission losses, generating more than $2.2 billion per year in consumer savings, and reducing power sector greenhouse gas emissions by 8 million metric tons annually. This legislation would also accelerate low-cost grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) and operational improvements, providing further savings and emissions reductions, including secondary and tertiary benefits of reduced congestion, lower renewable curtailment, faster interconnection of new generation, and avoided construction of new transmission lines. The SURGE Act unlocks these savings and emissions reductions by making efficiency financially attractive to utilities.
Text of the legislation can be found here.
###