Transmission companies must now publish standardized performance scorecards for public scrutiny.
H.R. 6176 — Electricity Transmission Scorecard Act · Filed by Sean Casten (D-IL) · 15 cosponsors · Introduced Nov 20, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill requires electricity transmission companies and grid operators to publish standardized performance scorecards twice a year (or annually for regional operators), measuring affordability, investment quality, reliability, interconnection fairness, and other metrics. The scorecards go to the Department of Energy and a public online portal so ratepayers, regulators, and researchers can compare how well different transmission providers serve the public. Independent auditors verify the data, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sets the rules.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is a mandatory standardized reporting and public disclosure regime for electricity transmission companies and grid operators. It is fundamentally a transparency and accountability tool, not a subsidy, deregulation, or carve-out. The operative effect is to expose utility performance to public scrutiny and regulatory comparison.
What the text implies
- Scorecard metrics on 'non-operational cost recovery' (lobbying, advertising, penalties) may expose utility spending on political advocacy and regulatory defense, potentially constraining future utility lobbying budgets if regulators use scorecards to challenge cost recovery.
- Interconnection fairness metrics comparing affiliated vs. unaffiliated generator treatment may reveal systematic bias in queue processing, creating pressure on utilities to deprioritize their own generation subsidiaries or face regulatory action.
- Standardized benefit-cost analysis requirements may force utilities to disclose modeling assumptions and selective assumptions that inflate project benefits, reducing their ability to justify expensive capital projects on opaque grounds.
- Public ranking of transmission providers by performance metric may create reputational and competitive pressure on lower-performing utilities, potentially affecting their ability to raise capital or justify rate increases.
- The bill requires independent auditors to rotate off utilities after 5 consecutive reporting periods (or 15 in 10 years), which may reduce auditor capture but also creates churn and potential inconsistency in verification standards.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Ordinary citizens and ratepayers gain transparency into how transmission companies spend their money and whether they are investing prudently or shifting costs unfairly. The scorecard framework enables regulators and the public to identify inefficiencies, discriminatory interconnection practices, and cost-recovery abuses that currently hide behind fragmented reporting. This supports lower rates and fairer access to the grid.
Named in the bill
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Laboratories, Independent System Operators (ISOs), Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), Transmission planning entities, Covered transmission owners (utilities), State public utility commissions, Electric Reliability Organization (ERO), North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)
Where it stands
15 cosponsors: 15 Democrats.
- Nov 20, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Nov 20, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $3,740,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 35 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Sean Casten, the sponsor, reported $783,050 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Pacific Gas and Electric Company — $3,530,000 on 1 filing
- Corporate Energy Buyers Association — $210,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (31,154 characters) on Jun 3, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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