On December 10, 2010, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (“the Court”) denied motions by a broad swath of industry and several states to stay EPA’s greenhouse gas (“GHG”) regulatory program.  The motions asked the Court to stay the appeals pending the Court’s disposition of the numerous appeals of these regulations on the merits. 

On December 6, 2010, the United States Supreme Court (“Supreme Court”) granted a petition from a group of electric utilities for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (“Second Circuit”) in Connecticut v. AEP. 

As 2011 rapidly approaches, electric utilities face significant legal and regulatory uncertainty on a variety of fronts.  First, with respect to transmission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (“FERC”) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on transmission planning and cost allocation and the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, Inc.’s (“MISO”) so-called “MVP” filing, which socializes the costs of new transmission projects across the entire MISO region, both remain pending. 

On Friday November 19, 2010, the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) announced that James M. Woodason, a former department manager at Consolidated Edison of New York (“Con Edison”), pleaded guilty to charges of accepting and agreeing to accept $807,000 in bribes from industrial pipe supply vendors. 

On November 30, 2010, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) released its 2010/2011 Winter Reliability Assessment (the “Assessment”) and the 2009/2010 Post-Winter Reliability Assessment.  NERC prepares an annual reliability assessment that demonstrates how the industry maintains the bulk power system for both summers and winters. 

On November 30, 2010, President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisor’s on Science and Technology (the “Council”) called for more investment in energy Research & Development (“R&D”) funding.  The Council suggested in a November 2010 Report on this topic that the amount of money spent on energy R&D should increase from $5 billion per year to $16 billion per year.