Legal & Regulatory

How companies respond to the COVID-19 pandemic will determine their public reputations, and those of their leaders and key employees, for years if not decades. This, along with public safety, is why “Priority Number One” for the CEOs of power producers, utilities, and grid operators is to make sure critical employees, such as control room […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has approved the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC’s) motion to defer implementation of seven reliability standards—including for grid cybersecurity—that were slated to become effective this year. In an April 17 order, FERC approved NERC’s April 6 requested motion to defer the implementation of the standards, which have effective […]

Legal challenges to the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule began in earnest April 17, as more than two dozen states and cities, along with several environmental activist groups, filed briefs with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., seeking a rollback of power plant regulations that also have been decried by coal […]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on April 16 withdrew the legal justification for an Obama-era rule that required coal-fired power plants to reduce their emissions of mercury. The Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS) remains in place, but Thursday’s action by the Trump administration could prevent similar regulations from being implemented in the future. EPA […]

It’s an unprecedented time for power generators worldwide. Utilities, grid operators, equipment manufacturers, and others working to keep the lights on know that a reliable supply of electricity is more important than ever as the world battles through the coronavirus pandemic. Dino Barajas, who recently joined the finance arm of DLA Piper in Los Angeles, […]

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to delay the implementation of seven reliability standards that relate to cybersecurity, training, disturbance monitoring and reporting, generator relay loadability, and coordination of protection systems for performance during faults. In an April 6 filing to FERC, NERC noted the rules […]

Federal regulators with oversight over U.S. power matters have issued a series of actions over recent weeks to respond to the potentially devastating impact that COVID-19, the new coronavirus, could have on North American power workforce operations and reliability. POWER will update this post regularly with COVID-19 response news and documents from federal and state […]

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) unprecedented temporary policy to relax enforcement of noncompliance with certain environmental rules in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has provoked an impassioned response from industry experts, environmental groups, and from the agency itself. As POWER reported, the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) on March 26 adopted a […]

This blog is part of a special series from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the response to the coronavirus. The IMF is an organization of 189 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic […]

The U.S. has 96 licensed-to-operate nuclear power reactors and two reactors under construction. But the average age of the nation’s 96 licensed nuclear units is about 39 years old. That has been of some concern to the nuclear industry, which has provided roughly a fifth of the nation’s power since the 1990s. About 88 of […]