WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) have introduced bipartisan legislation to improve power grid reliability while protecting utilities from conflicting environmental statutes. The Grid Reliability Act of 2014 would prevent a potential conflicting situation in which a utility is ordered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to run a plant to improve grid reliability while the operation of the utility would violate environmental statutes.

“Putting utilities in between regulators with conflicting rules, leaving them with no choice but to violate the law is an unacceptable way for our government to operate,” said Blunt. “This bipartisan bill would protect America’s utilities from unfair environmental fines or citizen lawsuits when the government forces them to operate for reliability purposes, and provide certainty to the people responsible for keeping the lights on.”

“This is an issue of common sense and fairness—the government shouldn’t be able to force an entity to take action and then allow it to be punished for that same action,” said McCaskill. “This bipartisan legislation does away with that conflict, allowing utilities to help improve regulated grid reliability without fear of burdensome and conflicting environmental statutes.”

In recent years, these conflicting laws have resulted in lawsuits and heavy fines for electricity providers attempting to comply with these statutes. This bill is similar to legislation sponsored by U.S. Representative Pete Olson (Texas) which passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year.