Energy Legal Blog

PR News announced that Bracewell & Giuliani’s Energy Legal Blog will be recognized as the best “Legal PR Blog” at its annual Corporate Social Responsibility & Legal Awards Luncheon on February 24, 2010 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. This award recognizes an outstanding and influential law-related weblog or online journal written by a representative of the organization with the goal of espousing the brand or a certain message and written with flair and personality.

“Managing a crisis and working with legal counsel are two areas of communication that will always be a part of a PR professional’s responsibilities,” notes Diane Schwartz, vice president of PR News. “The Legal PR Awards shines a light both on how law firms are communicating to their stakeholders and to how the PR industry is in the driver’s seat when a crisis hits.”

More information on the award program and this year’s winners is available at http://www.prnewsonline.com/awards/csr2009_event-finalists.html.

In response to a request from EnergyConnect, Inc. — an aggregator of retail power customers — FERC in a January 19 order disclaimed Federal Power Act regulatory jurisdiction over retail aggregators that provide service only from demand response resources ” because they [deal only in] agreements to reduce demand, i.e., agreements not to purchase electric energy under certain circumstances, rather than agreements to sell electric energy at wholesale.” Previously FERC had asserted jurisdiction to regulate all aggregators as “public utilities” under the FPA because they hold wholesale contracts that involve the sale for resale of energy that would ordinarily be consumed by an end-use customer. Nevertheless, FERC held that EnergyConnect, Inc. was a “public utility”, with attendant market-based rate filing obligations, because, in addition to aggregating demand response, it was also engaged in sales of ancillary services, which “involve the injection of electric energy onto the grid and a sale for resale in wholesale electric markets.”

The January 19 order further clarifies that, although not required to obtain market-based rate authority, demand response providers remain subject to various other regulatory requirements including rules for doing business with regional transmission organizations, the prohibition against market manipulation, and market transparency rules.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the US Department of Commerce on September 24 released its first round of almost 80 draft “Smart Grid” standards, which are intended to establish a framework for Smart Grid development.  These initial standards establish a conceptual model for the Smart Grid by (1) addressing how the many complex systems that make up the Smart Grid interrelate to each other; (2) developing a cyber-security strategy; and (3) identifying interfaces for which interoperability standards are needed.  (Interoperability-a key issue in standards for the Smart Grid-refers to the ability of diverse systems and their components to work together.)  The standards are available for public comment for the next 30 days (until around October 24, 2009), after which NIST will finalize them and send them to FERC for final approval and formal issuance.

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 directed the Federal Communications Commission to develop a National Broadband Plan. To help develop that plan, the FCC has requested comment on how advanced telecommunications services and infrastructure, and broadband in particular, can help implement Smart Grid technology. (more…)

On May 21, 2009, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) solicited supplemental comments in the Smart Grid Policy docket specifically related to how it should address requests for rate recovery from public utilities to install Smart Grid facilities that are not paid for through U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) funds, such as those authorized under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.  FERC also wanted comments on whether granting conditional approval of Smart Grid projects would prove helpful to public utilities in seeking federal funding. 

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As we enter 2Q09, entities across all sectors of the energy industry are growing anxious to see how—and when—federal agencies will open the spigot on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) funds. For its part, the Energy Department answered in two requests for proposals. (more…)