Overview
Law360 quoted Marc Spitzer in a January 1 article titled “Energy Regulation to Watch in 2018.” The article discusses four regulatory actions energy lawyers will be watching in the new year. According to the article, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has until January 10 to decide what it will do with Energy Secretary Rick Perry's proposal to pay coal and nuclear plants for providing grid resiliency and reliability services. Mr. Perry’s notice of proposed rulemaking (NOPR), which asked FERC to direct regional grid operators that run wholesale markets to revise their tariffs to ensure that baseload power generators in those markets fully recover their costs if they provide essential grid reliability services and have a 90-day fuel supply on site, has received virtually universal scorn outside of coal and nuclear industry advocates.
Mr. Spitzer, a FERC commissioner from 2006 to 2011, says whatever FERC decides to do with the NOPR, it's a controversial enough issue that the agency will want to have all five commissioners on board. "I think they would like a united commission. The commissioners have typically tried to do that in complicated cases," he says.
The full article can be read at Law360 (subscription required).
