Energy Policy & Legislation

States that have coal-dependent economies will likely have more difficulty complying with the Clean Power Plan than states like Oregon. There will be rate impacts to be sure. The trick will be compliance at the most reasonable cost that that can be assured.

Susan Ackerman, chair, Oregon PUC; Chris Nelson, vice-chairman, South Dakota PUC; Tim G. Echols, Georgia PSC; Paul J. Roberti, Rhode Island PUC

Energy efficiency remains the most cost-effective route to compliance with the Clean Power Plan. In the final Clean Power Plan rule issued August 3, 2015, EPA did not include Energy Efficiency in the calculations used to develop state targets. However, EPA and the White House have made it abundantly clear that energy efficiency remains just as viable a compliance option as before.

By September 1997, Philadelphia Electric Co. had outflanked key opponents and filed a proposed partial settlement with the Penn. PUC to allow the company to recover costs that might become stranded under a new law (enacted a year before) that had brought a measure of competition to the state’s electric utility industry. Then Enron went to work.

In the emerging era of distributed energy resources, we will find the distribution utility increasingly in the role of an integrator and enabler – more than their longstanding role as energy provider. Accordingly, the regulatory approach must go through its own structural shift to keep pace and restore the system to regulatory equilibrium.

By 1997, Peco employed some 21 registered lobbyists in Pennsylvania, almost more than any other single company: to push through favorable bills to restructure the state’s electricity marketplace.

With respect to the Clean Power Plan, the question is whether EPA will address the major issues and reinforce its positions in advance of the anticipated legal challenges.

The sheer scale of growth put a ‘stake through the heart’ of the old view.

In 1995, the pitched battle that played out between Peco and PPL became the functional equivalent of an advertising blitz in support of electricity restructuring, and planted the seeds for Enron to get involved in utility regulation.

While the underlying questions in each state regarding net energy metering are much the same, the two PUC's will approach the issue from different perspectives.