WASHINGTON, D.C. – Filing a lawsuit in the D.C. Circuit, the Sierra Club challenged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approval for the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) to fast-track the interconnection of mostly fossil-fueled generation to the power grid. SPP spans 14 states, stretching from Louisiana, parts of Texas, and New Mexico up to Montana and North Dakota. The Sierra Club also filed suit as part of a coalition challenging a substantially similar fast-track plan that FERC approved for the Midcontinent Interconnection System Operator (MISO).
The lawsuit challenges FERC’s approval of the Expedited Resource Adequacy Study (ERAS) process, which allows the fast-tracked projects to pass significant upgrade costs to residential customers, and to skip over and also pass significant upgrade costs to clean energy projects that have been waiting for years to connect to the grid. As the Sierra Club raised at FERC, SPP improperly dismissed the potential for the fast track to exacerbate challenges in processing and connecting the rest of the queued resources in SPP.
SPP, submitted the proposal to FERC, claiming that the fast track is necessary to meet increased demand from data centers powering artificial intelligence. But it has not demonstrated the expedited process is actually needed: in fact, SPP has suggested in other regulatory contexts that its other reforms to the standard interconnection queue will address any resource shortfalls for the grid it manages.
The price of new gas-burning power plants is outpacing inflation, and the trend is likely to continue according to new analysis. Duke University research notes that new demand for electricity, for example from data centers, can be flexed to avoid building expensive new gas plants while maintaining electric grid reliability.
The Sierra Club challenged SPP’s ERAS proposal before the FERC, which was denied, along with a request for rehearing that was also denied in September 2025. The Sierra Club is now filing a lawsuit challenging FERC’s approval of SPP’s ERAS interconnection fast-track plan.