Legal & Regulatory

In December 2010, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued a decision with considerable fanfare that was intended to provide for the development of 1,000 MW of additional new renewable generation and provide California’s large investor-owned utilities (IOUs) with additional flexibility in complying with California’s Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) requirements. Unfortunately, it is likely to have the opposite effect.

A high-stakes dustup is shaping up in connection with the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) proposed new standard to regulate combustible dust. When and if enacted, this new OSHA regulation will definitely affect the way personnel handle coal at power plants that use it for fuel.

The winter of 2010-2011 has been a cold one for financing renewable energy projects. That’s the weather report from a recent project financing meeting in New Orleans, a survey of developers and builders done by a large Minnesota construction company, and accounts from those in the financial trenches.

Don’t get fixated on the Environmental Protection Agency’s moves against carbon dioxide. The real action is in the area of conventional air pollutants.

Critical minerals—such as rare earth metals—are important to many new energy technologies. However, the U.S. Department of Energy is concerned that foreign control of supply, particularly by China, could limit the ability of these technologies to develop fully, so the DOE is developing a strategy to keep the supply chain open. Meanwhile, some analysts say China is playing a losing game with its hold on the minerals.

National Labor Relations Board Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon is continuing his focus on remedies in unfair labor practice cases involving union organizing campaigns. On September 30, 2010, he issued a memorandum on Section 10(j) injunctions for discriminatory discharges during such campaigns. Now he has released another memorandum, this one targeting remedies regional offices should seek when they issue complaints in ULP cases involving campaign activity.

All of our legal column writers have this issue off (they’ll be back in the March issue), so we are using this opportunity to invite readers to share their legal and regulatory (L&R) concerns.

Despite high-powered congressional legislation in 2005, the U.S. is still unable to site high-voltage interstate transmission lines in a timely fashion. Two new reports suggest ways out of the gridlock.

As mergers and acquisitions in the power sector heat up again, questions arise about how employee benefits are affected by these complex business deals.

In November, California voters overwhelmingly rejected an initiative that would have put the brakes on AB 32, the state’s ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction law. Given the role that California has played in climate change policy, that such a vote took place only four years into the law’s implementation process and 10 years before the emissions reduction targets were to be met was a reality check on climate change policy for those on both sides of the issue.