Electricity Grid

The European Commission has presented a package of key enabling legislation on sustainable finance (the “Sustainable Finance Package”).  This includes the much-awaited first technical screening criteria under the Taxonomy Regulation — outlined in the Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act (“TCDA”) — and a proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (“CSRD”), which significantly revises and expands on the existing Non-Financial Reporting Directive’s remit and disclosure rules for corporates. While the former is directly aimed at financial institutions and investors, and the latter at large and listed entities, the package has broader implications for all corporates.

Sustainable Finance Package: Context and Comment

The Commission’s intention with its Sustainable Finance Package is twofold: (1) in the short term, to set a clear regulatory framework to encourage investments that will contribute to a sustainable and inclusive economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic; and (2) in the long term, to ensure the transition to a carbon neutral EU economy by 2050, in accordance with the 2020 European Climate Law.  Following the adoption of the EU Taxonomy Regulation (explained further below), the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, and the Benchmark Regulation, which enhances the transparency of benchmark methodologies, the Commission has in this legislative package laid out the next building blocks for its envisioned sustainable finance ecosystem.

Continue Reading The EU’s Green Capitalism Takes Shape: Taxonomy Screening Criteria and Corporate Sustainability Reporting

This blog is the seventh in a series, “The ABCs of the AJP.”

Grid Modernization and Resiliency

Grid modernization and resiliency are critical and intertwined issues that only grow more important as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. As the Biden Administration notes in its American Jobs Plan fact sheet, recent power outages in Texas took a tremendous human and economic toll, and power outages generally cost the country $70 billion dollars a year in lost productivity. In light of that figure, the American Jobs Plan’s proposed $100 billion dollar investment in grid modernization may be too conservative. When factoring in health and environmental benefits, the return on investment for an improved grid looks to be extraordinarily robust.
Continue Reading Grid Modernization and Greenhouse Gases

This is the fourth in our series on “The ABCs of the AJP.”

The White House’s recent announcement of the American Jobs Plan (AJP) highlights the establishment of a “$27 billion Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator to mobilize private investment into distributed energy resources.”  While distributed energy resources (DERs) are only mentioned once in the announcement, they figure to play an important role in the Administration’s overall goals.
Continue Reading Distributed Energy Resources

FERC recently took two actions regarding its transmission rate incentives policies.  FERC proposed to scale back an earlier proposed increase in the return on equity (ROE) premium allowed in the rates of transmission owners that join Transmission Organizations such as RTOs/ISOs and proposed to clamp limits on its term.  The Commission also scheduled a workshop to address performance-based incentives for transmission technology deployment.  Both actions were taken in the context of a March 2020 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) aimed at, in part, awarding rate incentives for certain beneficial transmission investments.
Continue Reading FERC Focusing On Electric Transmission Incentives

In  two recent orders, the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) continued its push to enable distributed energy resource (“DER”) aggregators to compete in organized wholesale electricity markets.  DERs are located on the distribution system or behind the customer meter, and include electric storage resources, intermittent generation, distributed generation, demand response, energy efficiency, thermal storage, and electric vehicles and their charging equipment.  Aggregators may aggregate multiple small DERs as a single resource to compete in the market.
Continue Reading FERC Upholds Rule Opening Electricity Markets to Distributed Resource Aggregators and Acts to Restrict State Regulator Interference

FERC has opened a proceeding regarding the shift from non-electric to electric sources of energy at the point of final consumption, such as to fuel vehicles and to provide heating and cooling, including process heat at industrial facilities. To that end, FERC announced an April 29, 2021 conference “to initiate a dialog between Commissioners and stakeholders on how to prepare for an increasingly electrified future.”
Continue Reading FERC to Address Electrification and the Grid of the Future

On February 16, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued an order accepting an executed State Agreement Approach Study Agreement (Study Agreement) between PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (PJM) and the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (NJ BPU), pursuant to which PJM will solicit project proposals to expand or upgrade its transmission system to provide for the deliverability of 7,500 MW of offshore wind into New Jersey by 2035.  New Jersey is the first state in the PJM region to use the State Agreement Approach, a supplementary transmission planning and cost allocation mechanism in PJM’s Operating Agreement designed to meet states’ public policy needs.
Continue Reading FERC Accepts Study Agreement to Assess New Jersey Offshore Wind Deliverability

On February 12, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued an order adopting two pilots to test two frameworks for procuring distributed energy resources (DERs) to avoid or defer utility distribution investments by the state’s three investor-owned utilities.  The first framework, coined as the Partnership Pilot by the CPUC, is a five-year pilot establishing a DER distribution deferral tariff with a tiered payment structure open to any DER customer type. The Standard-Offer-Contract Pilot, the second framework, is a three-year pilot that will offer standard offer contracts to in-front-of-the-meter DERs.  The adoption of these frameworks is a continuation of the CPUC’s effort to implement Public Utilities Code Section 769, which took effect in 2015 and requires the CPUC to, among other things, identify mechanisms for the cost-effective deployment of DERs that satisfy distribution planning objectives.
Continue Reading CPUC Adopts Pilots Aimed At Procuring DERs In Lieu of Grid Investment

Recently, the three sitting Commissioners of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) convened thirty industry experts at a virtual Technical Conference on state adoption of carbon pricing and its implementation in organized, wholesale electricity markets managed by regional transmission organizations (RTOs) or independent system operators (ISOs).  Public interest was high, with more than 2,000 computers across the country logged on to the discussion, which stretched over nine hours.  Although no carbon pricing measures have been filed by RTO/ISOs for consideration by FERC, the sense of the Technical Conference was that proposals from states or from RTO/ISOs acting on their own initiative are right around the corner, irrespective of the election outcomes in November.
Continue Reading FERC Takes Close Look at Carbon Pricing

The FERC approved a final rule that will enable distributed energy resource (DER) aggregators to compete in organized wholesale electricity markets.  DERs are located on the distribution system or behind the customer meter and include electric storage resources, intermittent generation, distributed generation, demand response, energy efficiency, thermal storage, and electric vehicles and their charging equipment.  Aggregators will now be able to aggregate multiple small DERs as a single resource to compete in the markets, smoothing the way for many more of such resources to enter the wholesale market.
Continue Reading FERC Opens Electricity Markets to Distributed Resource Aggregators