Troutman Pepper Locke

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The National Ambient Air Quality Standard (“NAAQS”) for ozone established by the EPA under the Bush administration was challenged by a coalition of environmental and health advocacy groups, and is currently the subject of pending litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. EPA has now requested that the briefing schedule in that case be suspended for six months, in order for the new administration to review the existing ozone NAAQS and determine whether revision is warranted.

On Thursday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) introduced “The Clean Renewable Energy and Economic Development Act.” The bill would give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or “Commission”) the authority to step in if states are blocking the development of transmission lines designated to bring more renewable energy onto the nation’s electric grid.

On February 27, 2009, FERC approved a settlement agreement with Energy Transfer Partners LP (“ETP”) under which it will pay no civil penalty and neither admit nor deny any wrongdoing to any third party by Oasis Pipeline, LP (“Oasis”), an affiliate. The decision follows a ruling by FERC Administrative Law Judge Bruce Birchman that FERC was unable to prove Oasis had unduly discriminated against non-affiliated shippers (see November 21, 2008 edition of the WER).

President Obama on Tuesday issued a memorandum directing the Departments of Commerce and the Interior to reconsider regulations they had issued in December of last year to limit the impact of the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species. Although the Interior Department found that the number of polar bears have been increasing in the last several decades, the Department last year listed the polar bear as a threatened species based on actual and modeled future loss of Arctic sea ice.

On February 20, 2009, FERC accepted the California Independent System Operator Corporation’s (“CAISO”) Exceptional Dispatch provisions in its Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade Tariff (“MRTU Tariff”). While FERC believes that CAISO will rely on the Exceptional Dispatch mechanism much less frequently in the future as it gains experience with MRTU, the mechanism will maintain grid reliability in circumstances where resources issued exceptional dispatch instructions could exercise local market power.

The White House on Thursday released a budget including revenues based on an assumption that a cap-and-trade program limiting greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions will be in place by 2012. According to the budget document, the assumed cap-and-trade program has emission targets requiring GHG emission reductions of 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed EPA’s 2006 revision to the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (“NAAQS”) for fine particulate matter on the ground that the standard may not be sufficiently stringent. Commonly referred to as PM-2.5 (particulate matter that is less than or equal to 2.5 microns in diameter), PM-2.5 results from the emission of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, which are chemically transformed in the atmosphere into microscopic nitrate and sulfate particles.