A LawFlash prepared by our energy team discusses likely results of the Texas power outages and blackouts during the recent winter storm, which include federal and state investigations into the outages, federal investigations into commodity and futures price spikes during the storm, force majeure inquiries, and demands for corrective actions to ensure future reliability of the grid system.
Power & Pipes
FERC, CFTC, and State Energy Law Developments
In May 2020, US President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13920, banning the unrestricted import or use of certain categories of bulk-power system electric equipment from foreign adversaries, with a focus on Russian and Chinese equipment suppliers. The future of that regulation is now up in the air.
At its December open meeting, FERC proposed to establish rules for incentive-based rate treatments for voluntary cybersecurity investments by a public utility.
Following significant pushback from the regulated community, FERC and NERC Staff jointly announced in a new white paper that filings and other submissions to FERC describing violations of cybersecurity reliability standards would be entirely nonpublic. Under the revised approach, all cybersecurity noncompliance information will be considered CEII and not disclosed in response to FOIA requests.