Legal & Regulatory

As our January 2017 cover image of a dynamic Rubik’s Cube suggests, the power industry, especially in the U.S., is dealing with something akin to solving a 3-D puzzle whose pieces are being added and subtracted as the game is being played. Although shares of traditional, regulated electric utilities remain some of the most predictable […]

The U.S. market for electricity is trifurcated. More than half the country is served by competitive generators bidding against each other in wholesale markets. Almost half is served by conventional state-regulated, vertically integrated utilities controlling generation and transmission. The rest, a much smaller portion, consists of government-owned and customer-owned utilities, some of which are generators […]

The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) launched its 51st State Initiative in 2014 with a simple question: What if there were no predefined electricity market? No rules. No market designs. No policies. No subsidies for any type of energy resource. Just a grid to deliver electric power from a variety of sources. And customers. Plenty […]

A tumultuous election year that was marked by market turmoil, the events of 2016 clearly showed that big change is afoot for the power sector. Many of POWER‘s bold predictions for 2016, such as that the near-simultaneous surge in U.S. natural gas production and recent enactment of environmental rules would reshape the U.S. power sector, […]

Toshiba Corp.—the parent of Westinghouse Electric Co.—said it might book huge losses as a result of Westinghouse’s acquisition of the nuclear construction and integrated services business CB&I Stone & Webster Inc. (S&W). Westinghouse closed on its agreement with CB&I in December 2015. When the deal was made, Toshiba estimated that the amount of “goodwill” resulting […]

In a joint statement on December 20, the leaders of the United States and Canada announced that they had developed a new partnership that effectively bans additional licenses for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has abandoned an interagency review of draft model carbon trading rules that were issued alongside the final Clean Power Plan to make associated documents public before the Trump administration takes the reins at the agency. The agency proposed the model trading rules as components of state implementation plans that it […]

Fermi 2, a 1,170-MW boiling water reactor owned by DTE Electric on the western shore of Lake Erie, in Monroe County, Mich., has garnered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) green light to operate until March 2045. DTE Electric submitted an application to the NRC to renew the 29-year-old reactor’s operating license in April 2014. The […]

Although optimistic about the future of the coal industry under the Trump administration, Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp., the largest underground coal mining company in the U.S., does not expect the president-elect to bring back coal mining jobs or spur new coal-fired power plant construction. “I’ve asked President-elect Trump to temper his comments […]

The tumultuous Trump transition took another turn late Tuesday, as reports from many media outlets said he has picked Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a freshman who won a second House term in November’s election, to be Secretary of Interior. Many of the same media sources late last week said Trump would pick Washington Rep. Cathy […]

As one of its last official acts, the Obama administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) backed away from making a definitive statement on the impacts of hydraulic fracturing, saying it lacked sufficient data to quantify their severity and frequency. The 1,200-page final report issued December 13, “Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic […]

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) as his nominee to be Secretary of the Interior. There had been no official announcement as this was being written December 9, but CNBC said it had been informed of the choice by a “senior Trump official.” The Wall Street Journal and the […]

An email written by the team leader of an ongoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspection being conducted at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant suggested that the facility’s staff were “overwhelmed by just trying to run the station.” The wide-ranging NRC inspection began on Nov. 28. It is the third and largest inspection conducted as part […]

President-elect Donald Trump has picked Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Scott Pruitt, to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the New York Times reported Wednesday afternoon, citing a transition official. The report had not been officially confirmed or denied as this article was written.     Pruitt, 48, is a long-time supporter of the fossil fuel […]

The Tennessee Valley Authority this week said it will pay a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposed $140,000 fine for security violations at its Browns Ferry nuclear station near Athens, Ala. According to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, Steve Bono, Browns Ferry site director, said that the giant regional power agency “accepts full responsibility” for the […]

God forbid that you have a job that requires you to read the orders issued by public utility commissions (PUCs). As a regulator, I not only have to read them—I have to write them. And even I marvel at the arcane, trial-like proceedings of PUCs and the orders that emerge from them, which are the […]

As energy storage becomes more ubiquitous and projects grow in size and capacity, utilities of all types are exploring the best ways of putting it to use across the grid. The opportunities are large, but so are the challenges, according to a panel of executives who spoke at Energy Storage North America in October. New […]

Public utility commissioners matter. A lot. Now more than ever, these state regulators are charged with looking out for the best interests of utility customers in states that have regulated electric and other utilities. As we’ve seen from countless recent news stories, public utility commissions (PUCs) play a significant role in determining what power system […]

It’s often said that technology runs well ahead of the law. Not so long ago, the process of setting electric utility rates was only slightly more dramatic than watching paint dry. This was by design. There was generally only one goal—keeping the lights on—and everything else was structured to support it. The utility generated the […]

A mammoth, wide-ranging energy measure under consideration by the Illinois legislature that would provide billions of dollars in support for energy efficiency, microgrids, and—most controversially—the Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear power plants made it out of a key committee on Nov. 29 and could see a final vote by the end of the week. The Future […]

Nine people, including the chairman and chief engineer of the Fengcheng power plant, have been arrested following a scaffold collapse that killed 74 construction workers on November 24. The scaffold platform had been erected to facilitate work on a cooling tower that was being constructed at the plant located in Yichun City, Jiangxi Province. According […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is beginning a comprehensive three-week inspection of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth, Mass., as a result of the plant’s repeated performance deficiencies, the agency said in a November 28 statement. The inspection, planned for more than a year, is part of the NRC’s heightened oversight process, begun […]

RESOLVED: Retaining nuclear capacity is necessary to secure a reliable, cost-effective, low-emissions supply of electric power in the United States. That was the proposition for a debate between two high-profile opponents in “A Square-Off on Nuclear Policy” on November 16, the last day of the National Association of Regulatory Commissioners (NARUC) annual meeting in La Quinta, […]

A new feature at the annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) this year is an opportunity to test drive a variety of electric vehicles (EVs). State regulators and others attending the event could sign up to test drive electric models from Tesla, BMW, Nissan, and GM. Between noon and 2:30 […]

“We’re at a very challenging time,” said former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioner Tony Clark at the annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) on November 14. We have a “need for infrastructure, but it’s more difficult to get it sited and built than ever before.” Clark’s comment, which he […]

FirstEnergy Corp.—one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric utilities, serving customers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York—has made the strategic decision to exit the competitive power business. “We have made our decision that over the next 12 to 18 months we’re going to exit competitive generation and become a fully […]

Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the U.S. presidential election portends enormous changes in U.S. energy and environmental policy, and a nearly complete turnover of the men and women who will administer that policy for the next four years.

For several years, states in the northeastern U.S. have been in the midst of a major shift away from coal and nuclear power toward natural gas. As aging coal plants shut down on environmental concerns, and several of the region’s nuclear plants have been prematurely retired or faced with challenging economics, developers of natural gas–fired […]

In July 2016, the German parliament approved three major pieces of legislation specifically laying out the future of the celebrated Energiewende: the 2017 revision of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, the Electricity Market Act, and the Act on the Digitization of the Energy Transition. “These three pieces of legislation will ensure that the transition of […]

The dangers of the U.S.’s failing infrastructure have united both major political parties in calling for substantial capital investments to shore up safety and reliability. In California, the tragic explosion of the gas pipeline in San Bruno and the massive methane leak from the gas storage wells at Aliso Canyon have highlighted the potential for […]