Natural Gas Council Letter to FERC Chairman Glick on Reliability Technical Conference, February 2021 Cold Weather Report

Dear Chairman Glick:

The Natural Gas Council (NGC) writes to you today on behalf of those who produce, transport, and deliver U.S. natural gas across this country, to offer our industry’s perspective on natural gas and electric reliability.

We appreciate the Commission’s commitment to reliability by holding the September 30, 2021, Technical Conference, and your teamwork with the National Electricity Reliability Corporation (NERC) in assessing the underlying causes of cold weather outages in the final joint February 2021 Cold Weather report (“Final Report”). Like the Commission, the natural gas industry has made reliability a priority. We understand that a reliable electric system depends on a reliable natural gas system, not only during extreme weather events but also to support gas generation’s critical role in our nation’s transition to a lower emissions future. The NGC looks forward to engaging in a productive dialogue with the Commission, NERC, state officials, regional entities, and other industry participants to prioritize and address our most pressing challenges…

We were pleased that the Final Report recognized the importance of two issues that together create a fundamental challenge in gas-electric coordination that the natural gas and power industries need to overcome: addressing infrastructure adequacy and reducing generator contracting risk by valuing reliability in power markets. Solving these challenges will allow us to serve more readily generator needs. …