A vSphere Administrator is attempting to lower the EVC baseline on a vSphere DRS cluster but is receiving an error Which statement could explain why EVC cannot be lowered?

Powered-on VMs prevent raising the EVC baseline to a higher level, not lowering it - the blocking condition for lowering is DRS being enabled, not VM power state.

VMware requires vSphere DRS to be completely disabled before the EVC (Enhanced vMotion Compatibility) baseline can be lowered on a cluster. This restriction exists because DRS actively manages VM placement based on CPU feature sets, and lowering the EVC baseline while DRS is enabled could create CPU incompatibilities with currently running workloads. Once DRS is disabled, the administrator can safely modify the EVC mode downward and then re-enable DRS.

Powered-off VMs have no effect on EVC baseline changes in either direction and are not a blocking condition for this operation.

Setting DRS to Manual automation mode is insufficient - DRS must be fully disabled, not merely set to a less aggressive mode, before modifying the EVC baseline downward.