FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | January 29, 2026
CONTACT: Christina Nyquist | 603.930.8818 | cnyquist@epsa.org
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA) today responded to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)’s 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (LTRA), which shows the impact of rapid electricity demand growth amidst tightening supply margins and infrastructure development hurdles. The report comes as grid operators and power generators have already taken meaningful steps to bring new supply online, following years of retirement of dispatchable power generation resources due in part to state and federal policies.
“As competitive power generators focus on adding new supply, NERC’s LTRA highlights the importance of retaining existing capacity, as well as the outcome of policies that distort market signals and delay timely investment in essential power generation resources,” said EPSA President and CEO Todd Snitchler. “Reliability is best served by competitive electricity markets that send clear, durable development signals—not by policy interventions that create misalignment between supply and demand. In order to address the warnings NERC’s LTRA sets out, it will require getting market signals right while addressing permitting and siting delays, supply chain bottlenecks, and other barriers to development. That is the most transparent and cost-effective way to deliver sufficient power to ensure a reliable system.”
“It is notable that these challenges are national in scope and are not limited to any single market or operational structure,” he continued. “Competitive power markets are already delivering investment signals, and suppliers are responding—announcing more than 12,000 megawatts of new generation and uprates in PJM alone since 2024. At the same time, PJM and other RTOs/ISOs have cleared tens of thousands of megawatts of projects for interconnection, as have other RTOs throughout the U.S.; now the priority is building them. That requires regulatory certainty, predictable permitting at the local, state, and federal levels, and policies that will add these resources in a timely fashion to ensure long-term system reliability. EPSA and its members will continue this work, and engage with FERC, RTOs/ISOs, the Administration, and policymakers at every level to press for the ability to deliver reliable, cost-effective power while shielding consumers from investment risk.”
What it Will Take to Meet America’s Reliability Challenge
Sustain strong market signals and deliver new supply. Competitive power markets are sending clear signals for new generation, and competitive suppliers are responding. Since 2024, EPSA member companies have announced more than 12,000 megawatts of new generation, uprates, and restarts in PJM Interconnection alone, along with innovative arrangements to serve large new loads such as data centers and industrial customers. Maintaining these signals—and enabling approved projects to move forward—will be essential to keeping pace with demand.
Preserve and strengthen dispatchable resources critical to reliability. While competitive power suppliers are leaders in delivering power generation resources of all types, natural gas–fired generation and other dispatchable resources remain essential to maintaining reliability, particularly during extreme weather events. EPSA members are continuing to invest in infrastructure hardening, winterization, enhanced monitoring, and operational improvements across their fleets. Through the Reliability Alliance, competitive generators are also working with natural gas producers and pipeline operators to improve gas-electric coordination and address fuel delivery challenges during stressed system conditions.
Improve load forecasting to protect reliability and consumers. As demand grows rapidly, accurate and transparent load forecasting is essential to informed planning and investment decisions. Forecasts should distinguish between committed load and speculative projects, reflect realistic development timelines, and be updated regularly to avoid over- or under-building. Sound forecasting helps ensure that reliability solutions are targeted, cost-effective, and protective of consumers. Meanwhile, competitive power markets shield consumers from the risks associated with uncertainty and shifting demand estimates as the data center industry evolves.
Provide the certainty needed to build at scale and on time. Meeting America’s reliability challenge will require policies that remove non-market barriers, provide long-term regulatory certainty, and enable timely project development. Allowing competitive markets to function as designed will ensure that private investment can deliver reliable, affordable power at the pace consumers and the economy require.
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The Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA) is the national trade association representing America’s competitive power suppliers. EPSA members provide more than 225,000 MW of reliable and competitively priced electricity from environmentally responsible facilities using a diverse mix of fuels and technologies including natural gas, wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal, storage, biomass, and coal. EPSA seeks to bring the benefits of competition to all power customers. Learn more at www.epsa.org and connect with us on LinkedIn and X @EPSAnews.
