[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 6176 Introduced in House (IH)]
<DOC>
119th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 6176
To require standardized performance reporting for entities engaged in
electricity transmission to improve transparency, accountability, and
grid outcomes, and for other purposes.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
November 20, 2025
Mr. Casten (for himself, Mr. Mullin, Mr. Huffman, Mr. Subramanyam, Mr.
Quigley, Mr. Garamendi, Ms. Castor of Florida, Mr. Moulton, Mr. Foster,
Mr. Levin, and Mr. Carson) introduced the following bill; which was
referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To require standardized performance reporting for entities engaged in
electricity transmission to improve transparency, accountability, and
grid outcomes, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Electricity Transmission Scorecard
Act''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) Electricity transmission facilities and services
provided by covered transmission owners affect interstate
commerce and are essential to the Nation's economic well-being
and national security.
(2) Transparent, standardized performance data on
transmission systems promotes cost-effective investment,
prevents unduly discriminatory practices, and protects
ratepayers.
(3) Existing reporting requirements are fragmented,
inconsistent, and do not allow for meaningful comparison among
transmission providers, RTOs, and ISOs.
(4) To ensure that all transmitting utilities are subject
to uniform, non-discriminatory access obligations, to safeguard
the public interest in the reliability, affordability, and
efficiency of the interstate transmission system, and to ensure
the development of just and reasonable rates, a common
performance reporting framework is necessary.
(5) Systemic transparency across all utilities engaged in
transmitting electricity enables ratepayers, investors,
generators, regulators, researchers, and other stakeholders and
market participants to clearly compare transmission rates,
outcomes, and practices across regions and governance
structures.
(6) Market and policy innovation in the electricity sector
is enhanced by making grid performance data publicly available,
thus empowering independent research, enabling competition, and
reducing information asymmetries between utilities and external
actors.
(7) The quality of economic, reliability, and environmental
outcomes delivered to customers can improve as a result of
performance-based accountability.
(8) It is in the best interest of the Nation to require
standardized data submissions and scorecard reporting from all
utilities engaged in transmitting electricity, including those
not subject to section 205 or 206 of the Federal Power Act, to
evaluate whether service comparability and nondiscrimination
obligations are being met and to ensure that ratepayers are not
burdened by inefficiencies, lack of investment, or the absence
of cost-effective solutions that would increase capacity,
reduce congestion, facilitate interconnection, or otherwise
reduce unnecessary costs and reliability concerns for
ratepayers.
SEC. 3. PERFORMANCE SCORECARD ELEMENTS AND VERIFICATION.
(a) Reporting Requirements.--
(1) Transmission investment, accountability, and
performance scorecards.--
(A) In general.--The Commission shall require each
covered transmission owner to biannually develop,
publish, and submit to the Secretary a report, to be
known as a Transmission Investment, Accountability, and
Performance Scorecard (or a TIAPS report), that
includes metrics evaluating the following:
(i) Ratepayer affordability, which shall
assess the cost of transmission services per
unit of energy transmitted or other metrics
that can be used to assess affordability of
energy provided to ratepayers.
(ii) Financing costs, which shall assess
the financing structure and cost of capital for
a covered transmission owner, and may include
consideration of capital structure and leverage
ratios, reliance on formula rates or other
automatic adjustment mechanisms, allowed and
earned returns on equity, the cost of debt and
preferred stock, the presence and magnitude of
incentive rate adders, and other related
metrics.
(iii) Investment prudency and cost
recovery, which shall assess the prudency of
capital investments and the transparency and
structure of associated cost recovery
mechanisms, and may include the frequency and
magnitude of cost disallowances in rate
proceedings, the types of facilities or
investments associated with disallowed costs,
the degree of cost recovery from ratepayers
relative to shareholder contributions, and the
transparency and accountability of cost
allocation frameworks.
(iv) Investment effectiveness, which shall
assess the value delivered by covered
transmission owner investments relative to
their costs, including how effectively the
covered transmission owner considered and
deployed the most economically efficient
solutions to reduce cost burden on ratepayers
and the accuracy of project cost estimates, and
may include metrics related to benefit-cost
analyses, investments in advanced technology
deployment, non-wires alternatives,
reconductoring, grid-enhancing technologies, or
other operational upgrades that avoid higher
cost capital investment, estimated and actual
cost for new or updated assets, and other
indicators of prudent capital deployment.
(v) Capital expenditure bias, which shall
assess the covered transmission owner's balance
of spending on capital investment versus
operational and maintenance activities.
(vi) System reliability and availability,
which shall assess the operational performance
of the transmission facilities of the covered
transmission owner over the reporting period,
including information related to outages,
equipment availability, and resilience to
system disturbances, and may be expressed using
existing transmission-specific reliability
indicators, as described by the North American
Electric Reliability Corporation or other
entity established to oversee and administer
reliability standards and procedures for the
bulk-power system, metrics regarding the
economic costs of outages or lost reliability,
or other related metrics.
(vii) Physical system performance, which
shall assess how effectively the transmission
facilities owned, operated, or controlled by
the covered transmission owner are used to
deliver electricity, including both physical
and economic performance, and may include
technical and non-technical losses, utilization
relative to rated capacity and design
constraints, age of system components, and
other indicators of transmission system
utilization, performance, and efficiency.
(viii)(I) Interconnection and access
fairness, which shall assess the extent to
which the interconnection process for
interregional interconnections and new
facilities (including generators, energy
storage, load, and merchant transmission
projects) is conducted in a timely and
impartial manner consistent with Commission
regulations, including comparisons between
affiliated entities and unaffiliated entities,
and may be expressed as the difference in the
number of days from initial interconnection
request to execution of an Interconnection
Agreement, or through related measures of
procedural equity.
(II) For purposes of this clause:
(aa) The term ``affiliated entity''
means any entity that has a direct or
indirect relationship with a covered
transmission owner or its parent entity
that could reasonably influence
interconnection treatment, including an
entity that--
(AA) shares common
ownership or controlling
interest with the covered
transmission owner or its
parent entity;
(BB) is a direct or
indirect subsidiary of the
covered transmission owner or
its parent entity;
(CC) is engaged in a joint
venture, contractual
partnership, or strategic
alliance with the covered
transmission owner or its
parent entity, where such
partnership includes shared
financial interest, revenue
sharing, or asset co-
development; or
(DD) is otherwise
determined by the Commission to
have a financial, governance,
or operational relationship
that may reasonably be expected
to influence interconnection
prioritization.
(bb) The term ``unaffiliated
entity'' means any entity that--
(AA) has logged an
interconnection request with
the covered transmission owner;
and
(BB) is not an affiliated
entity.
(ix) Non-operational cost recovery, which
shall assess the amount of covered transmission
owner spending on lobbying, advertising,
penalties, and advocacy activities recovered
through customer rates, and may be expressed as
expenditures on each such activity, a total sum
of expenditures on such activities, or related
metrics.
(x) Interregional and regional planning
integration, which shall assess the extent to
which the covered transmission owner
participates in coordinated regional and
interregional transmission planning processes
and infrastructure development, and may be
expressed as the number and capacity of
interregional transmission ties, the share of
projects subject to regional or interregional
planning review, or related metrics.
(xi) Any additional matters that--
(I) may be evaluated using outcome-
based performance metrics identified by
the Commission, giving preference to
quantitative metrics over qualitative
metrics; and
(II) the Commission determines are
necessary to improve transparency,
affordability, reliability, equity, or
environmental performance of the
facilities owned, operated, or
controlled by the covered transmission
owner.
(B) Exemptions.--
(i) Categories.--The Commission may, by
rule, exempt all covered transmission owners in
a category of covered transmission owners from
the requirement to include a metric described
in subparagraph (A) if the Commission
determines that the metric is demonstrably
inapplicable to all covered transmission owners
in the category.
(ii) Scope.--The Commission shall ensure
that the scope of any metric from which a
category of covered transmission owners is
exempted under this subparagraph is as narrow
as possible in order to preserve consistency
and comparability among scorecards.
(C) Coordination.--In preparing and developing a
scorecard pursuant to this paragraph, a covered
transmission owner shall coordinate, as necessary to
obtain or estimate data required to be included in a
scorecard under this section, with any relevant entity,
including--
(i) regional grid operators, including
Independent System Operators, Regional
Transmission Organizations, transmission
planning entities, and balancing authorities;
(ii) interconnected electric utilities,
including load serving entities and other
transmission providers;
(iii) owners of generation facilities,
including utility-scale and merchant generators
seeking interconnection or operating within the
service territory of the covered transmission
owner; and
(iv) regulatory and oversight entities,
including State public utility commissions, and
applicable Federal or State energy,
reliability, or environmental agencies.
(2) Regional investment, accountability, and performance
scorecards.--The Commission shall require each Independent
System Operator, Regional Transmission Organization, and
transmission planning entity to annually develop, publish, and
submit to the Secretary a report, to be known as a Regional
Investment, Accountability, and Performance Scorecard (or a
RIAPS report), that includes the following:
(A) Aggregation of the metrics reported for the
year in the scorecards submitted under paragraph (1) by
the covered transmission owners within the jurisdiction
of the applicable ISO, RTO, or transmission planning
entity, which shall consist of a summary of such
metrics that--
(i) reflects weighted or capacity-adjusted
averages of covered transmission owner-reported
metrics, as appropriate;
(ii) highlights significant intra-regional
variation or performance outliers; and
(iii) does not obscure material differences
among transmission owners or regions.
(B) Regional-specific metrics, which shall consist
of reporting on metrics specific to operational
responsibilities of the ISO, RTO, or transmission
planning entity, including the following:
(i) Market efficiency, which shall assess
the extent to which the ISO, RTO, or
transmission planning entity is successful in
operating efficient wholesale electricity
markets, minimizing system congestion, and
maximizing the use of existing grid
infrastructure to deliver cost-effective
outcomes for consumers while maintaining
required standards of reliability, and may be
expressed as a