On May 1, 2017, FERC filed a brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) arguing for the dismissal of United Airlines Inc. and UPS Fuel Services Inc’s (together, “Shippers”) petition for review of a 2013 FERC order in which FERC allowed Enterprise TE Products Pipeline Company LLC (“Pipeline”) to discontinue its jet fuel and diesel fuel transportation service to various shipping entities, including Shippers.  Shippers’ petition for review alleged that Pipeline’s termination of this service violated a 2013 settlement agreement (“Settlement Agreement”) requiring Pipeline to provide this service through May 31, 2015.  FERC’s brief argued that the petition should be dismissed for lack of justiciability, or in the alternative, for lack of standing.

On May 1-2, 2017, FERC staff held a technical conference on wholesale energy and capacity market design, focused on markets operated by ISO New England Inc. (“ISO-NE”), New York Independent System Operator, Inc. (“NYISO”), and PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) (collectively, “Eastern RTOs and ISOs”).  The goal of the conference was to explore the balance between FERC’s regulation of these competitive wholesale markets and recent efforts by states to ensure that certain categories of generating resources receive sufficient revenue to continue operating.  Stakeholders from various sectors of the electricity industry attended to express concern that these eastern organized markets require regulatory intervention of some sort—with a regulatory response from FERC unlikely to take place until at least a three-Commissioner quorum is established.

On April 21, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (“Ninth Circuit”) held that: (1) FERC did not act arbitrarily or capriciously in ordering the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) and California Power Exchange Corporation (“Cal-PX”) to net sales and purchases over hourly intervals when calculating refunds to entities that participated in the CAISO and Cal-PX markets during the California energy crisis of 2000-2001; and (2) that FERC did act arbitrarily and capriciously in allocating a $5 million refund shortfall only to net buyers instead of all market participants.  The Ninth Circuit opinion is the latest adjudicatory decision in a series of administrative hearings and judicial appeals arising out of the California energy crisis.

On April 24, 2017, PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) submitted an amicus curiae brief in a legal challenge against an Illinois program to provide additional revenue for some of the state’s financially-struggling nuclear energy facilities.  The program allows eligible generators to generate and sell Zero Emission Credits (“ZECs”) and obligates the state’s utilities to buy a certain share of those credits.  In its brief, PJM argued that the program allows uneconomic generators to continue participating in wholesale energy and capacity markets, thereby causing “substantial[] harm” to the markets and other participating generators.

On April 21, 2017, the California Independent System Operator Corporation (“CAISO”) requested that FERC find CAISO’s current tariff just and reasonable, and that CAISO no longer needed to implement several outstanding directives that were issued in a 2006 order conditionally approving CAISO’s Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade (“MRTU”) tariff amendments, which were designed to, among other things, implement a nodal market in the CAISO footprint.

On April 25, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) dismissed Portland General Electric Company’s (“PGE”) and PáTu Wind Farm LLC’s (“PáTu”) petitions for review of FERC’s orders finding that PGE must purchase all of the power delivered by PáTu pursuant to their power purchase agreement (“PPA”) under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (“PURPA”), but that PGE was not required to use dynamic scheduling.  In doing so, the D.C. Circuit held, among other things, that: (1) it lacked jurisdiction to review FERC’s resolution of PGE and PáTu’s PURPA dispute because the orders were merely declaratory; (2) circuit court review of PURPA section 210(h) enforcement actions occurs on appeal from district courts; and (3) FERC’s Federal Power Act (“FPA”)-based regulations cited to by PáTu in support of its claim that FERC should require PGE to use dynamic scheduling only apply to the transmission customer-transmission provider relationship, which was unlike PáTu and PGE’s relationship.

On April 14, 2017, Renewable Energy Systems Americas (“RES) and Invenergy Storage Development LLC (“Invenergy”) (collectively, the “Complainants”) filed a complaint with FERC against PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”), alleging that changes PJM made to a dispatch signal used in its Regulation market were unjust, unreasonable, and unduly discriminatory, and therefore in violation of the Federal Power Act (“FPA”) and FERC precedent.

On April 14, 2017, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“DC Circuit”) held that FERC erred in setting the base return on equity (“ROE”) for ISO New England Inc. (“ISO-NE”) at 10.57 percent.  The DC Circuit granted a petition filed by a group of New England transmission owners (“NETOs”), and a separate petition filed by a group of wholesale transmission customers and other consumer-side stakeholders (collectively, “Customers”) located in the New England region.  The DC Circuit vacated the underlying FERC order and remanded the case to FERC for further consideration.

On April 18, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) upheld FERC orders that (1) required ISO New England (“ISO-NE”) and its participating transmission owners (“TOs”) to remove right of first refusal (“ROFR”) provisions from their Transmission Operating Agreement (“TOA”) that granted incumbent transmission facilities the option to construct any new transmission facilities within their footprint; and (2) permitted ISO-NE to consider state policy goals in evaluating transmission needs during the Order No. 1000 transmission process.  Of note, the D.C. Circuit affirmed FERC’s finding that the Mobile-Sierra presumption against abrogating negotiated contract provisions was overcome because the TOA’s existing ROFR provisions “severely harm the public interest.” 

On April 20, 2017, staff from the ISO New England Inc. (“ISO-NE”), presented a proposal to its ten-member Board of Directors on how to better incorporate state-subsidized new resources into ISO-NE’s Forward Capacity Market (“FCM”).  The proposal contemplates a two-stage process whereby retiring resources that clear the annual Forward Capacity Auction (“FCA”) can transfer their capacity obligations to state-subsidized generators in exchange for payment and permanent retirement.  If approved by the Board of Directors, stakeholder discussions could begin in May, with associated tariff revisions filed with FERC in December.