The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule on August 21. The proposed rule would replace the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, establishing alternative guidelines for states to develop plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired electric power plants. The ACE rule departs from the Clean Power Plan, among other ways, by removing incentives for natural gas and renewable energy use, limiting averaging and trading in state plans, giving states more flexibility in creating plans, slowing down state plan development and submission schedules, and proposing a new industry friendly test for the New Source Review permitting process. Overall, EPA has projected that the ACE rule will result in similar carbon dioxide emissions reductions in comparison to the Clean Power Plan.
Public comments made last week by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Chief of Staff Anthony Pugliese before the American Nuclear Society indicate that the agency is working with other federal government officials to identify power plants that are “absolutely critical” to the grid, E&E News reported. In particular, Mr. Pugliese revealed that the US Department of Energy and the National Security Council are coordinating with FERC to classify those generators that are vital to ensuring that critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and military bases, remain online and operational. The comments also reflect a related concern that many large gas-fired generators could pose reliability and resiliency risks, as the natural gas infrastructure supporting those plants could be susceptible to physical attacks or cyberattacks.
On August 1, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission) issued a notice establishing the dates by which certain jurisdictional natural gas pipeline companies must file FERC Form No. 501-G, the “one-time” informational filing the Commission plans to review to ascertain whether the pipelines have, in light of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, accounted for reduced federal corporate income taxes in their cost-of-service rates (one-time report). The notice revises the submission dates in FERC Form No. 501-G’s Implementation Guide, which was released alongside FERC’s final rule in Order No. 849, the decision directing the natural gas companies to submit the one-time reports. The final rule is described in more detail in our previous LawFlash.
Under the revised Implementation Guide, natural gas pipeline companies that are required to FERC Form No. 2 or 2-A for calendar year 2017 are organized into three distinct groups. Group I must file FERC Form No. 501-G by October 11, 2018; Group II, by November 8, 2018; and Group III, by December 6, 2018. In its final rule, FERC explained that if a pipeline refuses to promptly submit the one-time report, or fails to correct a patently erroneous or incomplete one-time report, the Commission could consider the pipeline to be in violation of its reporting obligation under FERC’s rules and regulations, provided the Commission does not otherwise grant a waiver for good cause. FERC also emphasized that pipelines may file FERC Form No. 501-G earlier than these dates.
FERC is allowing interested parties to file interventions, protests, and comments in response to the submissions. Those filings will be due 12 days after each pipeline’s one-time report due date.
On July 25, the Department of Energy (DOE) issued a final rule, effective August 24, to provide expedited authorization of applications to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to non–Free Trade Agreement (FTA) countries (i.e., those countries with which the United States has not entered into an FTA) using “small-scale” natural gas export facilities. To qualify for expedited treatment, applicants must satisfy two criteria:
- The application must propose to export a volume of natural gas that does not exceed 51.75 Bcf/yr
- The application will not require DOE to issue an environmental impact statement (EIS) or an environment assessment (EA) pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA)
Any non-FTA application that satisfies these two criteria will qualify as a “small-scale natural gas export” and therefore will be deemed to automatically satisfy DOE’s Natural Gas Act (NGA) Section 3 public interest standard. Additionally, DOE will not provide a public notice and comment period for qualifying small-scale natural gas export applications, nor will it apply other procedures typically used during its review of large-scale LNG export applications to non-FTA countries.
Pursuant to Section 3 of the NGA, applications to export natural gas or LNG to FTA countries are automatically deemed to be in the public interest and do not require DOE to conduct a detailed review process. Thus, DOE’s final rule will significantly streamline the review process for qualifying small-scale applications by putting them on equal footing with large-scale and small-scale FTA applications.
In the final rule, DOE agreed that small-scale exports will provide a variety of benefits both to the United States and to importing countries primarily located in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. For the United States, some of the anticipated benefits include stimulating the natural gas market, generating economic growth, strengthening the global natural gas market, and enhancing US national security interests abroad. Additionally, DOE determined that small-scale exports will not adversely affect the availability of natural gas supplies to domestic consumers.
DOE welcomes suggestions, data, and information on additional deregulatory efforts that it could undertake with respect to its NGA Section 3 authority.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission recently issued two orders intended to alleviate concerns that jurisdictional natural gas pipelines may be over-recovering cost-of-service rates due to (1) a reduction of the federal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21% under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and (2) the DC Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in United Airlines Inc. v. FERC, which found that FERC’s existing income tax allowance policy, when applied to pass-through entities such as master limited partnerships, creates a possibility of double recovery for income tax allowances under cost-of-service rates. The Commission will now require pipelines to submit informational filings identifying whether the benefits of federal tax reform have been passed on to ratepayers, and has also clarified its guidance that pass-through entity pipelines may eliminate the accumulated deferred income tax component from their rates when they exclude income tax allowances from their costs of service.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission) issued Order No. 848 on July 19, directing the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to augment the cyber incident reporting requirements under the Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) reliability standards. The directive adopts the proposals from the December 2017 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) and reflects the Commission’s view that FERC and NERC need to significantly improve their awareness of the breadth and frequency of the cybersecurity risks that electric utilities encounter.
Read the full Lawflash.
Officials at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed yesterday to The Wall Street Journal that state-sponsored hackers successfully gained remote access to the control rooms of US electric utilities and likely had the ability to disrupt power flows. The report describes the activities as part of a long-running campaign targeting US utilities and suggests that the attacks are still ongoing. This is not the first time that a federal government agency has publicly confirmed the actual or potential threat posed by hackers to critical infrastructure (see our previous post on state-sponsored attacks). Instead, it marks yet another confirmed instance of hackers gaining access to the secure networks used by industrial control systems in what has become a disconcerting trend in recent years, and continues to underline the importance of strong vendor and supply chain cybersecurity controls.
On July 19, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or Commission) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) proposing to revise its regulations restricting certain officers and directors of public utilities from holding “interlocking” positions (i.e., positions in which an individual is simultaneously a director or officer of two different types of business entities covered by the regulations). The NOPR proposes a limited measure of relief from some of the Commission’s longstanding regulatory hurdles for public utility executives.
FERC’s interlock rules implement Section 305(b) of the Federal Power Act, which was enacted to ensure arm’s-length dealings between public utilities and the organizations furnishing financial services or electrical equipment to those utilities. Under the regulations, any person seeking to hold any of the following interlocking positions must file an application for approval from FERC before being appointed:
On July 19, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved most of the revisions proposed by a North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) petition to revise NERC’s rules of procedure (ROP) on operator certification, but rejected certain key changes. FERC concluded that NERC’s proposal to remove those provisions would strip substantive rules from the ROP and move them to NERC manuals, thus defeating the efficacy of FERC review because the ROP is subject to FERC review and approval but NERC manuals are not.
