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On May 14, 2015, the Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) in which it proposed to approve Reliability Standard TPL-007-1 regarding Geomagnetic Disturbance (“GMD”) Events.  According to the Commission, the Reliability Standard requires applicable Bulk-Power System (“BPS”) owners and operators to conduct initial and on-going vulnerability assessments regarding the potential impact of a benchmark (i.e.,1-in-100 year) GMD event on the BPS as a whole, and on BPS components individually.  In addition, the Commission stated that the proposed Reliability Standard requires applicable entities to develop and implement corrective action plans to mitigate any vulnerabilities identified by such assessments.

On May 14, 2015, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NOPR”) proposing to change the date on which FERC begins to assess annual charges for hydropower licenses and exemptions that authorize unconstructed projects and unconstructed new capacity.  The Federal Power Act and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1986 require that FERC collect annual charges from such licensees and exemptees in order to cover the costs of administering the hydropower portion of the Federal Power Act.

On April 29, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (the “Ninth Circuit”) held that FERC failed to comply with the court’s remand order in a 2004 case involving the California Energy Crisis—California ex rel. Lockyer v. FERC (“Lockyer”)—by improperly structuring its administrative fact-finding proceeding to focus solely on the accumulation by wholesale power sellers of excessive market share, and not including an analysis of possible deficiencies in transaction reporting by those sellers.  The court remanded the case back to FERC for further proceedings.

On May 1, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) held that the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it modified its National Emissions Standards and New Source Performance Standards (“NSPS”) to allow backup generators to operate without emission controls for up to 100 hours per year in emergency demand-response programs.  As a result of the ruling, the D.C. Circuit reversed the 100-hour exemption and remanded the rules back to EPA for further action.

On May 1, 2015, FERC issued an order assessing civil penalties against Maxim Power Corporation, Maxim Power (USA), Inc., Maxim Power (USA) Holding Company Inc., Pawtucket Power Holding Co., LLC, Pittsfield Generating Company, LP (collectively “Maxim”) and an Energy Marketing Analyst at Maxim, Kyle Mitton (“Mitton”), finding that Maxim and Mitton violated section 222(a) of the Federal Power Act and FERC’s Anti-Manipulation Rule, 18 C.F.R. § 1c.2.  FERC assessed civil penalties of $5,000,000 against Maxim and $50,000 against Mitton. 

On April 24, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) denied Petitioners’ (Citizens of the town of Myersville) review challenging FERC’s orders approving Dominion Transmission, Inc.’s (“Dominion”) “Allegheny Storage Project,” and specifically FERC’s approval of the construction of a new natural gas compressor station in Myersville, Maryland (the “Myersville Compressor”).   In denying the petition, the D.C. Circuit concluded that each of the Petitioners’ challenges lacked merit.

On April 24, 2015, FERC approved PJM Interconnection LLC’s (“PJM”) request for waiver of its tariff to delay its 2015 Base Residual Auction (“BRA”) for the 2018-2019 delivery year.  As a result of the waiver, PJM’s BRA will not take place as originally scheduled, but rather during a week that is 30 to 75 days after FERC rules on the merits of PJM’s pending capacity performance proposal, but no later than the week of August 10-14, 2015.

On April 16, 2015, FERC approved a new policy statement that will allow interstate natural gas pipelines to recover certain capital costs used to modernize or replace the pipeline’s existing facilities through the use of a surcharge mechanism.  FERC explained that the new policy statement was created in anticipation of new, future requirements from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration that will likely require interstate pipelines to upgrade their pipeline systems for improved safety and reliability.