- The U.S. nearly doubles its gas-fired generation capacity in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period last year. Is the comeback for real?
- Acceding to political reality, more and more, Northeastern states are using cap-and-trade money to reduce electric bills.
- Europe, too, is backing off on moving away from fossil fuels under pressure from sluggish growth and rising utility prices. Ditto, Canada and the U.K.
- As concern over affordability and reliability grow, PJM proposes new bring-your-own-power rules for large-load customers like data centers.
- FERC convenes a session to reform PJM’s governance structure, but is the issue a diversion?
- Both parties agree that permitting reform is needed to relieve the current energy crisis, but can a compromise bill pass?
Natural Gas Appears to Be Making a Comeback, With Planned Additions to Electricity Generation Nearly Doubling in a Year
Over the past few years, solar has dominated additions to America’s electricity generation capacity. In 2025, for instance, solar was responsible for 50% of the growth in capacity; wind, 14%; natural gas, 7%. But that ratio could soon be changing.
With the decline of coal over the past two decades, natural gas became the number-one source of electric power in the U.S. in 2016, but its proportion has stagnated in the past few years as renewables have increased. Here is the breakdown, as of last year, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), a federal agency.
According to a report released Aug. 25 by the Global Energy Monitor,(GEM), which tracks energy infrastructure around the world, “the United States nearly doubled the gas-fired capacity it is developing to directly power data centers” in the first half of this year, compared with the same period in 2025.
The report said that an addition of 189 gigawatts (GW) of gas-fired capacity was planned for data centers as of June 30, 2026, compared to 97 GW a year earlier. In an article about the report, Heatmap pointed out that the “count includes plants proposed by utilities to meet demand from data centers, as well as off-grid projects that companies are building to power data centers directly.”
Global Energy Monitor analysts also warn that “uncertainty persists about how and when this capacity gets built.” The report cites “turbine supply constraints, financing uncertainty, local data center moratoriums, and mounting public opposition [that] leave the true scale of the gas power buildout uncertain.”
The GEM report added, “Two-thirds of gas-fired capacity in development globally, and more than half of projects tied to data centers, do not have a named turbine/engine manufacturer. Nearly one-quarter of projects earmarked for data centers do not have a named start year.” Jenny Martos, project manager for GEM’s Global Oil and Gas Plant Tracker, said:
This frenzy of gas proposals is running headlong into the hurdles of an already tight gas market. It is nearly impossible nowadays to guess what is a pie-in-the-sky proposal and what has a real chance of getting built. The projects that eventually clear those hurdles are paying top dollar for turbines, locking in emissions, and pushing up electricity prices.
Still, the boom in planned natural gas infrastructure is significant. Total gas-fired power in development jumped 50%, from 252 GW to 378 GW in a single year. That’s a huge increase when you consider that the U.S. had 512 gigawatts of natural gas generation capacity operating as of the end of 2025.
The bulk of the increase in planned gas-fired power for data centers, says the report, is occurring in one state, Texas, at 41 GW, followed by Ohio (16 GW), Pennsylvania (14 GW), and West Virginia (9 GW). It is no accident that Texas is the top U.S. natural gas producer, with Pennsylvania second and West Virginia fourth. Ohio is the site of the largest data center project in the world, built on federal land and, according to plans, powered by a 9.2 GW natural gas plant.
The report noted that natural gas “projects under construction in the U.S. rose 76% in the first half of the year, reaching 52 GW, of which 16.9 GW is for projects intended to directly power data centers. The U.S. is now building twice as much gas-fired capacity as China (24 GW) and has nearly three times its gas-fired power capacity in development” (see the graphic below).
The report also had up-to-date information on turbines, whose scarcity has hindered development of new natural gas generation.
“Gas turbines.” said the report, “are the most critical and expensive component in building a gas-fired power plant. Faced with rising turbine demand, the leading three turbine manufacturers are now reporting rising order backlogs and multi-year lead times.”
But developers are “increasingly turning to reciprocating engines and smaller aeroderivative units,” said the GEM report. These can be manufactured and installed far faster. The report added:
Typically deployed during periods of high demand, gas turbines and engines are less efficient than combined-cycle plants and carry higher emissions per unit of electricity generated. According to GEM data, engines and gas turbines make up nearly half of the generating technology for data center-tied gas power proposals, compared with just 17% of projects not tied to data centers in development globally.
The advantage of natural gas over solar is that it is available around-the-clock – unlike solar and wind. It is dispatchable, that is, it can be adjusted on demand by grid operators to match supply with electricity demand.
Northeast States Accelerate Diversion of Funds from Cap-and-Trade to Reduce Electric Bills
This newsletter has reported frequently on moves by Northeast states to divert funds from cap-and-trade programs to reduce residential electric bills. Now, that trend is accelerating. That shouldn’t be a surprise. As this map from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows, the Northeast is a hotbed of high electric utility rates, and voters are angry.
A Heatmap article by Matthew Zeitlin on Aug. 13 began:
A carbon price can be a tough sell when electricity costs are rising. That’s what governors up and down the eastern seaboard are facing as they decide what to do with revenues from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative [RGGI], an 11-state cap-and-trade program for the electricity sector that operates from Virginia to Maine.
The RGGI describes itself as a “market-based effort” among 11 states “to cap and reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector…. It represents the first cap-and-invest [also called ‘cap-and-trade’] regional initiative implemented in the United States.”
If their emissions exceed a cap, power plants have to buy permits at auction to emit. Funds are typically used for programs like home weatherization to further reduce CO2. But some of the costs get passed by businesses to consumers. The Commonwealth Institute, a Pennsylvania think tank, cited economic models estimating that the RGGI increases residents’ electric bills by 30%.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, signed a deal in November to extricate Pennsylvania from the RGGI, becoming the first Democrat to quit the consortium, reported Politico. “That fact landed like a thunderclap on the left, where Shapiro is viewed as an influential Democratic voice and a likely presidential contender.”
Another Democratic governor, Abigail Spangenberg of Virginia, who took office in January, re-joined the RGGI, which her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, left in 2023.
But Spangenberg made changes. “When Virginia was last a member of RGGI, the proceeds from the auctions for emissions allowances largely went to an energy efficiency program for low-income households and a flood resilience fund,” reported Heatmap’s Zeitlin. “Today, having rejoined RGGI, some 45% of the revenue will be earmarked for rate relief, thanks to a budget amendment passed in June.”
In New Jersey, another new governor, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, championed legislation, passed in July, to use money raised through RGGI to fulfill a campaign pledge to freeze electric rates by directly reducing bills.
In New Hampshire, writes Zeitlin, “nearly all the state’s proceeds from the program now go to rate relief, compared to about three-quarters historically.” And New Hampshire residents need relief. According to the latest report from the EIA, the average price of electricity per kilowatt hour for residential users in the state rose 10.6% for the 12 months ending June 30. The Heatmap piece adds:
In its latest report on how RGGI funds get used, the organization reported that in 2024, the last year for which comprehensive data is available, some 23% of RGGI proceeds went to direct bill assistance, compared to 16% over the 17-year lifetime of the system.
The push for increased rate relief is happening at the same time that the clearing price for carbon dioxide allowances at auction is hitting its highest level in history: $35 per ton. In the second quarter of 2026, the RGGI cap-and-trade system raised twice as much for the states as a year earlier. Over the past 12 months, the RGGI has raised more than $2 billion.
The Heatmap article notes that while the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) supports temporary utility-bill relief, “it also has also mounted a defense of using RGGI revenues ‘to fund energy and environmental programs.’” The current trend, wrote Jo Gardias and Dawone Robinson for the NRDC, “means less investment in programs that provide long-term benefits,”.
Said Gardias:
The question of how you spend proceeds is a large question of tradeoffs. What we’re seeing now is that because we have price spikes that are happening from data centers and other factors, there’s more interest in spending money on bill credits that provide immediate relief.
The entire RGGI program could eventually be in jeopardy. “The affordability narrative is the leading political narrative of 2026,” said Dallas Burtraw, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, to Heatmap’s Zeitlin. “And the albatross around the neck of carbon pricing has been that it’s going to raise energy prices.”
To Increase Affordability of Electricity, Europe, the U.K. and Canada Are Also Revising Carbon-Reduction Programs
The U.S. isn’t the only place where climate policies that raise prices for consumers and businesses are being walked back. A Wall Street Journal article on Aug. 23 highlighted actions by the E.U., the U.K. and Canada to delay their green goals in the face of higher energy costs.
“The European Union has proposed to relax its landmark carbon-pricing system,” wrote Benoit Morenne and Matthew Dalton. “Canada dismantled and unpopular carbon tax.”
The reporters quote Daniel Yergin, the energy historian, as saying, “The Green Deal had been a central focus of Europe. Now, for Europe, the focus is obviously on security and on being economically competitive.”
Europe has been adopting renewables much faster than the United States. Wind and solar represent 34% of the continent’s power generation, compared with 14% for the U.S., and Europe’s rate of uptake has been rapid, rising from a 20% share in 2021.
A report by the European Environment Agency, which came out in April as the closing of the Strait of Hormuz was boosting natural gas and gasoline prices, argued that “deployment of renewables could prevent a 125% rise in EU wholesale prices by 2030.” But that deployment itself will be costly and, at a high level, probably politically impossible.
The Journal reporters cite problems in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, where The Economist is predicting less than 1% GDP growth this year. German households and businesses “pay some of the highest electricity bills in the world.” Morenne and Dalton continue:
Faced with growing discontent, authorities have cut taxes and fees used to subsidize renewables. Lawmakers also rolled back a controversial mandate that would have required most Germans to install costly renewable systems to heat their homes, in favor of letting them continue to burn oil and gas.
The Journal piece does note that “European industry was hit hard by a big increase in power and natural-gas prices in recent years” because of the war in Ukraine. “But the EU’s decision to tighten climate regulations played a significant role in the rising price of electricity.”
The E.U. in 2021 cut the number of emissions allowances on the market. Their prices soared, driving up the price of power – the same problem that RGGI members face. “Emissions allowances now account for a quarter to a third of the EU’s wholesale power price,” hitting cement makers, steel producers and other energy-intensive industries especially hard.
Heavy industries responded by shutting down factories. “British chemical maker Ineos said last year it planned to shut two plants in Germany, after closing plants in the U.K. and Belgium and mothballing facilities in France and Spain.” Said the CEO of an Ineos subsidiary, “Europe is committing industrial suicide.”
Meanwhile, the U.K. is reviewing its electric-vehicle sales targets to ensure they remain “pro-business and grounded in the real world,” said Andy Burnham, the Labour Prime Minister, in July. “When people are struggling, you can’t ignore that.”
In a report on Aug. 18 by Onward, a U.K. center-right think tank, Claire Coutinho, a Conservative who is the Shadow Secretary of State for Energy, blasted Labour policies behind “the highest industrial electricity prices of International Energy Agency member countries, and the second highest domestic prices, just behind Germany.” Coutinho blamed high prices on two causes:
First, a power system centered on intermittent generation from wind and solar. “Building new transmission lines, balancing the grid and retaining a backup power system to deal with still, dark winter days all add to system costs. Those costs are charged to consumer bills, rather than being properly internalised by the generators that cause them.”
Second, she wrote, “95% decarbonisation of the power sector has been prioritised ahead of electrification. This has driven up electricity costs, making electrification more costly and less attractive than it should be.” She continued:
The UK can get out of this mess by building the electricity system around a core of reliable generation capacity. The opportunity is material, with the potential for £320 billion of system cost savings from 2030 to 2050.
In addition, Canada’s Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney “has dismantled some of the central planks of predecessor Justin Trudeau’s energy policy – including an unpopular consumer carbon tax,” wrote Morenne and Dalton in the Journal. Canada is now not on track to meet its climate goals, including net zero emissions by 2050.
A separate Journal piece last year stated, “Already the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter and fifth-largest exporter of natural gas, Canada is leaning even harder into fossil fuels and reversing costly climate initiatives to offset the economic shock from President Trump’s tariff war.”
Around the world, enthusiasts for rapid conversion to renewables-based electricity appear to be mugged by reality.
As Opposition to Data Centers Mounts, PJM Tells Large Customers to Bring Their Own Power
In response to concerns about higher rates and decreased reliability from the boom in data centers, PJM Interconnection on Aug. 12 issued a proposed framework that would require “new data centers and other Large Load customers that bring their own power supplies consistent with the Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” according to PJM’s “Inside Lines” blog.
That pledge, contained in a March 4 Presidential Proclamation, is a non-binding initiative of the White House to prevent residential customers from having to pay more for their electricity because of capital investments by utilities to meet the demand from data centers. According to the pledge:
Leading United States hyperscalers and AI companies guarantee that data centers’ energy needs will not increase household electricity costs for American citizens. Instead, these companies will build, bring, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their energy demands,
The new PJM framework, Reuters reported, would force data centers to use their own “back-up generators when electricity supply on the grid approaches dangerously low levels.”
PJM, the largest grid operator in the nation, covering a territory, mainly in the Middle Atlantic and Midwest, with 67,000 residents, explained:
A new emergency procedure would notify utilities to reduce or transfer the electricity demand from data centers and other large power users ahead of any action that would shut off traditional consumers such as households. PJM said it does not, however, currently have the authority to curtail power to those sites and would require the cooperation of individual state governments.
Tim McLaughlin of Reuters wrote that the “proposal highlights a growing tension between the rapid expansion of data centers and the ability of the nation’s power grid to keep up. If PJM cannot close its supply gap, millions of residents and businesses face an increased risk of blackouts, and the cost of new generation could be passed on to other power consumers.”
Concerns about high costs from data centers have become a contentious political issue.
Communities worry that will have to lay out heavy costs to accommodate data centers that either won’t show up or will flee if a bubble bursts. They don’t trust the big tech firms that are doing all the building.
A new Heatmap poll found that 61% of Americans “strongly oppose” a data center being built near where they live – up from 24% a year ago. In total, 75% oppose data centers nearby and only 15% support them; a year ago, more respondents supported than opposed.
Axios reported Aug. 10 that the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) said in a memo that “toxic views of data centers are killing the party’s chances of holding a vital seat in Ohio.” The committee said that Democrats have made data centers a centerpiece of their campaign to defeat Sen. Jon Husted – and that it is working.
A Fox News poll released Aug. 13 found Husted trailing Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown, 53% to 45%. On the campaign recently, Husted blamed higher utility bills on the closure of fossil-fuel-driven power plants:
You want to have lower electricity prices — I want to tell you why they’re rising. Because Congress and, under the Obama administration, under the Biden administration, they closed 23 power plants in the state of Ohio, representing half the electricity we use on a daily basis. Radical climate policies did that.
As we noted above, Ohio is the site of the largest data center project in the world, built on federal land and powered by a 9.2 gigawatt (GW) natural gas plant.
The Information, a tech news platform, reported that temporary or permanent data center bans surpassed 500 in July. See the map below.
Even business-friendly Republican states are taking steps to slow development. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, “ordered a pause on approvals of new data center projects through the state’s grid interconnection process, citing concerns that a surge in electricity demand could threaten reliability at a time when opposition to the projects is growing,” Reuters reported.
Abbott is seeking a fourth term, and he shrugged off criticism by Donald Trump that slowing data center development would hurt the Texas economy. Texas ranks number-two in the world in data centers, behind Virginia.
Some 77% of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in June agreed with the statement, “I am concerned AI will make electricity more expensive.” But research indicates that, at least at this point, data centers aren’t mainly responsible for utility bills that, according to the EIA, have risen 5% for the year ending June 30,a moderation of a 1.1 points from the previous month.
USA Facts, the non-profit research outfit founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, issued a report Aug. 11 that stated:
One simple, though far from perfect, test for whether data centers are driving up residential electricity prices is to see if there were large price increases in states with more data centers. But the data from 2022 through 2025 do not show a statistically significant relationship.
Some of the largest increases occurred in states with few data centers, like Maine and New Jersey, while Virginia and Texas had negligible hikes in average residential electricity prices during the period.
A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report in May, stated that a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Brattle Group “did not identify data centers as major influencers of electricity prices in most areas of the country between 2019 and 2025.”Instead, the main drivers were “utility investments in grid infrastructure, mostly in response to aging infrastructure and resilience needs.”
In fact, large loads like data centers can actually reduce electric bills. A paper by Asa Watten and colleagues, published in June by the Electric Power Research Institute, a non-profit funded by government, academia, and the private sector, found that “data centers caused average retail electricity rates to fall modesty in the United States from 2015 to 2024.” They continued:
Despite prevailing sentiment, the finding is consistent with economic reasoning: existing large power system fixed costs, economies of scale in transmission and distribution, and declining unit costs for generation imply that durable demand growth lowers average prices. We find patterns of economies of scale for transmission, distribution, and generation costs as well as within and across retail customer classes.
It may be difficult, however, to convince the public. In addition, added pressure from data centers in 2026 and subsequent years could have a real impact on both prices and resilience, which is why PJM and other grid operators are responding with policies that encourage data center developers to bring at least part of their own power needs.
FERC Pushes PJM to Fix Governance Processes, But Shouldn’t Focus Be on Connecting New Resources to Its Grid?
As we reported in Newsletter No. 62, the FERC Technical Conference on July 23 looked at the “governance and stakeholder processes” at PJM, the largest regional transmission operator (RTO).
At the time, Laura Swett, the chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said that PJM had until the end of September to agree to governance reforms or FERC will impose them. “PJM is facing a grave legitimacy crisis,” Swett said. “Some transmission owners are openly discussing leaving the RTO altogether. Put plainly, market participants have lost confidence in PJM’s decision-making abilities.”
PJM then issued a “term sheet” that was presented to stakeholders at an Aug. 19 meeting as a basis for discussion. According to the American Public Power Association, the specific terms proposed by PJM include:
- Changing PJM’s stakeholder process to voting that is advisory instead of binding and providing for expedited consideration of issues
- Extending the PJM Board of Managers terms of service from three to nine years
- Adding state-appointed representatives to the Nominating Committee for the PJM Board of Managers
Beginning Sept. 1, FERC mediators will convene stakeholders and states in a dispute resolution process to evaluate governance reforms. Then PJM will present the full package at its Sept. 24 Members Committee meeting for review and approval.
Some close observers, however, are questioning whether all this attention on governance isn’t distracting from the real issues facing PJM and other grid operators, which are getting new resources connected to the grid and ensuring that electric power is affordable and reliable in a time of rising demand.
An Update on Permitting Reform
“There is widespread agreement in Washington,” writes Callie Patteson of the
Washington Examiner, “that one of the most important pieces of legislation Congress could pass this year is meaningful permitting reform.”
In fact, it could be the most important law to relieve the current electricity crisis, where sharply rising demand is pressing against limited supply. New supply takes years to come online, in large part because of regulatory hurdles that Congress has been trying, unsuccessfully, to remove for four years.
Permitting reform would have major implications. It “would broadly target the federal approval process for all sorts of new energy and infrastructure projects including pipelines, transmission lines, highways, and even housing,” writes Patteson.
At the heart of reform plans is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law by Richard Nixon on Jan. 1, 1970. The Bipartisan Policy Institute (BPI) on Aug. 26 released an “explainer” on efforts to change NEPA and why so many members of Congress of both parties think it’s necessary.
David Zeger of BPI writes that NEPA “calls for federal agencies to consider, and in some cases extensively study, environmental impacts before making certain decisions and taking certain actions, and its timelines and litigation risks shape whether and how quickly energy and infrastructure projects get built.”
The Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), passed during the Biden Administration in 2023 set a two-year deadline for environmental impact statement, “but 61% of completed reviews still exceed it,” writes Zeger, “and nearly a quarter take more than five years.”
Here is what the NEPA process looks like:
The BPI report explains that “opponents of a project that is subject to NEPA frequently challenge the permitting agency’s NEPA analyses in court. Agencies win most suits, but litigation adds cost and delay and drains limited agency resources—not just in defending NEPA-related litigation but in doing work and preparing documents during the study process that are primarily for the purpose of litigation defense rather than informing agency decision-making.”
Zeger continues, “Because NEPA creates no cause of action of its own, litigation challenges proceed under the federal Administrative Procedure Act and its default sixyear statute of limitations.”
Members of Congress have proposed reforms to make the process faster and more predictable. “Measures under debate would narrow the scope of required analysis, expand faster review tracks and tighten deadlines,” says the BPI report.
For example, the SPEED Act (H.R. 4776), co-authored by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, and Rep. Jared Golden, a centrist Democrat from Maine, has become the main vehicle in the House for overall reform. It would modernize NEPA by clarifying when the statute is triggered, simplifying the analysis required in NEPA documents, and imposing judicial review limits that include a 150-day deadline for filing claims.
The SPEED Act passed the House, 221-196, with 11 Democratic votes, in December. It is now sitting in the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Most Democrats voted against the SPEED Act because they worry about harm to the environment if judicial review is limited. Last September, 26 conservation organizations sent a letter of opposition to Westerman’s committee, claiming the legislation “restricts the ability of frontline communities and the general public to provide input on projects that will impact them and to seek judicial recourse for wrongful government action.”
But Zeger is right when he says that “policymakers across the political spectrum agree NEPA is too slow and uncertain.” In their letter, the environmental groups write that they “recognize that recent calls for permitting reform are driven by legitimate concerns over the slow pace of permit approvals for building out the electric grid, renewable energy, and affordable housing.” They just don’t like reform that hamstrings NEPA.
There are other bipartisan proposals for permitting reform in the House as well. Reps. Scott Peters (D-CA) and Andy Barr (R-KY) have legislation (H.R. 5600) that gives the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) new authority to permit individual national-interest transmission lines.
The Problem Solvers Caucus, a group of House moderates from both parties, released a framework that borrows from earlier legislative proposals. Their plan would amend the Clean Water Act so that states can’t block projects beyond water quality concerns. They also want to “cut down on duplicative NEPA reviews in energy corridors,” reduce the statute of limitations for lawsuits to one year or less, and put 150-day limits for national priority projects (like the SPEED Act does).
The BPI explainer states:
The challenge is calibrating the process to protect the environment and affected communities while eliminating unnecessary delays and uncertainty. How Congress reforms NEPA will shape how quickly the country can build the energy and infrastructure it is counting on, and, in turn, the price of energy, the pace of new development, economic growth, and good environmental outcomes.
In the end, the Senate will decide the outcome. The Environment and Public Works Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee are both negotiating from the Manchin-Barrasso Energy Permitting Reform Act, which cleared ENR on a bipartisan 15-4 vote in 2024.
The text has not been released, nor has the Senate decided on a vehicle to which to attach legislation that would make it easier to pass. One possibility is the Water Resources Development Act; another is the surface transportation bill.
But the big problem remains tradeoffs. Republicans want to balance ease of fossil fuel development with transmission and renewables development, but Democrats aren’t so sure – especially with the Trump Administration using its power to cancel, delay or decline to permit wind and solar projects.
A Utility Dive report noted that, at a hearing in April, Sen. Angus King, (I-ME), who caucuses with the Democratic Party, told Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that in the current political climate, it would be “’foolish’ to pass permitting reform that allowed fossil projects to move with more alacrity through the system, and theoretically would allow renewable projects, only to end on your desk or on somebody else’s desk or with some kind of action by another agency.” King added:
I want you to understand I’m in favor of permitting reform, but not until this administration stops the role that you’ve been playing thus far. And I understand about the prior administration. That’s a good argument for quitting this arrangement where one administration says no to certain forms of energy and the other says no to the other. We’ve got to stop that and make the permitting process neutral, fact-based, consistent and predictable.
Democrats, said an E&E News piece in July, “continue to press for significant measures to…restrain the president’s power to cancel approved energy project permits.” The article added, “It’s unclear whether the White House — and its allies on Capitol Hill — would accept any permitting deal that would restrain the president’s powers.”
Negotiations continue. If permitting reform does pass, chances are that it be won’t be until sometime in November or December, during the lame-duck period after the mid-term elections.