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Today, FERC Commissioners and Norman Bay, who has been confirmed by the Senate to serve as a FERC Commissioner, will testify before the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power regarding the potential impact of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) proposed rulemaking establishing carbon emissions guidelines for stationary generation sources.  EPA’s proposed rule is specifically designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired electric generating units.

On July 18, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) issued a decision denying petitions for review of FERC’s orders related to Regional Transmission Organization (“RTO”) transmission expansion cost allocation for FirstEnergy Service Company (“FirstEnergy”) after it transitioned between two RTOs.  Specifically, the D.C. Circuit affirmed FERC’s rejection of FirstEnergy’s request for relief from the PJM Interconnection L.L.C.’s (“PJM”) annual allocation of transmission expansion plan costs for any project approved before FirstEnergy transitioned to that RTO. 

On July 18, 2014, United States Senator Robert Casey (D-PA) sent a letter to the Department of Energy’s Inspector General requesting a review of FERC’s Office of Enforcement’s practices with regard to investigations of alleged manipulation in energy markets.  Senator Casey requested that such a review take place in order to ensure that FERC’s Office of Enforcement was fairly conducting its investigations and that all enforcement actions were transparent.

On July 17, 2014, FERC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (“NOPR”) proposing to approve the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”) Reliability Standard CIP-014-1.  The goal of the Reliability Standard is to enhance physical security measures for the most critical Bulk-Power System facilities and thereby lessen the overall vulnerability of the Bulk-Power System facilities against physical attacks.  FERC also proposed to direct NERC to develop two modifications to the standard.

On July 8, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) issued an order denying petitions for review of FERC’s January 19, 2012 order requiring certain market mitigation measures in ISO New England Inc.’s (“ISO-NE”) Forward Capacity Market (“FCM”).  The D.C. Circuit instead deferred to FERC’s reasoning, holding that FERC based its buyer-side and supplier-side mitigation measures on substantial evidence and undertook its balancing responsibilities with appropriate consideration.  Notably, the D.C. Circuit upheld FERC’s prior decision that the FCM must have an offer-floor mechanism to keep “out of market” capacity from bidding as a price-taker and depressing market-clearing prices.

On July 7, 2014, FERC petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“D.C. Circuit”) for an en banc rehearing of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion that vacated FERC’s Order No. 745, which required organized wholesale energy markets to compensate demand response resources at the market price for energy (see June 13, 2014 edition of the WER).

On July 7, 2014, FERC approved a Stipulation and Consent Agreement between its Office of Enforcement (“Enforcement”), the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (“NERC”), and Arizona Public Service Company (“APS”) relating to the September 2011 Southwest power outage that affected approximately 2.7 million customers in Southern California, Arizona and Northern Baja Mexico.