On January 12, 2011, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) released a report entitled “Electricity Grid Modernization: Progress Being Made on Cybersecurity Guidelines, but Key Challenges Remain to be Addressed” (the “Report”).  This Report highlighted key issues which could cause concern for the smart grid system and identified regulatory problems affecting smart grid cybersecurity standards.

On January 11, 2011, the Department of Energy’s (“DOE”) Existing Plant Program and Sequestration program at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (“NETL”) released their December 2010 Carbon Dioxide Capture (“CCS”) and Storage RD&D (research, development, and demonstration) Roadmap (the “roadmap”).  The roadmap outlined the DOE’s efforts to advance CCS technology.

On January 20, 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) posted a report  by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (“LBNL”) called “Use of Frequency Response Metric to Assess the Planning and Operating Requirements for Reliable Integration of Variable Renewable Generation” along with its five supplementary papers (together, the “Report”). 

On January 20, 2011, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) conditionally approved the Violation Risk Factors (“VRF”) and Violations Severity Levels (“VSL”) for version 2 and 3 of the Critical Infrastructure Protection (“CIP”) reliability standards.  The CIP standards encompass many security concerns including sabotage reporting and cyber security.

According to the latest data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”) Renewable Energy is becoming a larger part of domestic energy production in the United States.  EIA publishes a Monthly Energy Review (the “Review”) which examines the latest figures regarding all sources of energy. 

On January 10, 2011, the five current Commissioners at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC” or the “Commission”) sent a joint letter (the “January 10th Letter”) to the Wall Street Journal (the “Journal”) in response to a December 30, 2010 editorial called “The Midwest Wind Surtax” (the “December 30th Editorial”).