On June 1, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“DC Circuit”) held in National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners v. United States Department of Energy that the Secretary of Energy (“Secretary”) failed to perform a valid evaluation of annual fees collected from generators for disposal of nuclear waste under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (the “Act”).  The DC Circuit ordered the Secretary to conduct a re-evaluation of the annual fees within six months, but stopped short of ordering the fees suspended. 

On June 14, 2012 the Commission accepted the tariff filing of Iroquois Gas Transmission System, L.P. (“Iroquois”) specifying the priority rules that should apply to Iroquois’ transportation and other services for initial scheduling purposes and in the event of a constraint at either a receipt or a delivery point or along the transportation path. 

On June 15, 2012, FERC and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (“NRC”) held a joint meeting on grid reliability at FERC.  The meeting was in furtherance of a Memorandum of Agreement (“MOA”) (see September 11, 2009 edition of the  WER) between the two agencies to facilitate interactions about matters of mutual interest relating to the bulk power system. 

On June 15, 2012, Tony Clark was sworn in as a Commissioner of FERC.  Commissioner Clark’s nomination was approved by the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on April 26, 2012 (see April 30, 2012 edition of the WER), and confirmed by the Senate on May 24, 2012 (see June 4, 2012 edition of the WER).

On June 7, 2012, FERC provided guidance to PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (“PJM”) on whether there was a responsibility to oversee worker safety under its Open Access Transmission Tariff (“OATT”) and whether the OATT’s limited liability clause precludes a negligence tort claim by an injured utility worker.  The Commission determined that PJM is not responsible for maintaining workers’ safety during maintenance procedures.

On June 4, 2012, FERC issued an order adopting a paper hearing process to address audit recommendations and factual findings in an ongoing dispute between FERC Staff and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) over a financial performance audit (see June 4, 2012 edition of the WER).

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory recently performed a modeling study aimed to quantify the total effect that increases in wind energy will have on pollutant emissions from an electric power system.  Although wind energy generation does not itself generate harmful emissions, wind is thought to have the potential to create a negative effect on emissions from the rest of the power grid as thermal power producers are required to adjust their output level in response to wind’s variability and unpredictability.

On May 30, 2012, EPA finalized its proposal to allow states to use compliance with the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (“CSAPR”) as an alternative to the Best Available Retrofit Technology (“BART”) requirements for individual sources under the Clean Air Act regional haze program.  To help implement this decision, EPA also replaced several state regional haze plans that relied on the predecessor to CSAPR, the Clean Air Interstate Rule (“CAIR”), with federal plans that rely on CSAPR in lieu of BART.