FERC has issued a notice of inquiry inviting comments on potential changes to its regulations requiring financial assurance measures in licenses and other authorizations for hydroelectric projects.
Power & Pipes
FERC, CFTC, and State Energy Law Developments
At its December open meeting, FERC proposed to establish rules for incentive-based rate treatments for voluntary cybersecurity investments by a public utility.
FERC has issued a final rule, Order No. 874, expanding the eligibility criteria for Qualifying Facilities (QFs) as defined under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) to enable certain fuel cell–based electric generation to receive QF status.
Following its December 17 open meeting, FERC issued an order withdrawing and terminating a proceeding that had been opened earlier this year to examine oil pipeline affiliate contracts.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) proposed revisions to its Policy Statement on Natural Gas and Electric Price Indices (Policy Statement) on December 17 to encourage market participants to report transactions to price index developers and to provide greater transparency into the natural gas price formation process.
The US Senate has confirmed the nominations of Mark Christie (R) and Allison Clements (D) to fill the remaining Republican and Democratic vacant seats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. These confirmations restore FERC to its full capacity of five members for the first time in almost two years.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission) Office of Enforcement (OE) issued its 2020 Report on Enforcement on November 19.
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.
Read our recent LawFlash analyzing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) Order No. 2222, which directs wholesale electric market operators to facilitate the participation of distributed energy resource (DER) aggregators under one or more participation models.
FERC has issued an order extending the blanket waivers of all requirements to hold meetings in person and/or to provide or obtain notarized documents in open-access transmission tariffs through January 29, 2021.