Speaking Energy

On April 9, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order (EO)¹ directing several federal agencies and subagencies that regulate energy, environmental, and conservation matters,² including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Department of Energy (DOE), to establish conditional sunset dates for “regulations governing energy production.” The stated objective of the EO is to require agencies to periodically reexamine their regulations to ensure that they continue to serve the public good. For FERC, the order covers regulations promulgated under the Federal Power Act (FPA), the Natural Gas Act (NGA) and the Powerplant and Industrial Fuel Use Act (FUA)³, as amended, while DOE must consider regulations promulgated under the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), the National Appliance Energy Conservation Act, the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct 1992), the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005) and the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), as amended (collectively the Covered Regulations).⁴ To the extent the DOE has been directed to promulgate regulations under various sections of the NGA, FPA and FUA, and FERC has been directed to promulgate regulations specific to the statutes attributed to the DOE in the EO, the EO is silent. The EO expressly does not apply to those “regulatory permitting regimes authorized by statute.”⁵

On April 8, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order (EO) directing the Department of Energy (DOE) to take steps to expand the use of its emergency authority under Federal Power Act (FPA) Section 202(c) to require the retention of generation resources deemed necessary to maintain resource adequacy within at risk-regions of the bulk power system regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).¹ The EO appears to envision a more active role for DOE in overseeing and supporting the resource adequacy of the grid that deviates from the historic use of Section 202(c) and touches on issues at the intersection of state and federal authority over resource planning.

On June 28, 2024, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., which for 40 years required court deference to reasonable agency interpretations of federal statutes in certain circumstances, even when the reviewing court would read the statute differently. The Court ended “Chevron deference” and held that courts “must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.” In doing so, the Court upended a longstanding principle of administrative law that is likely to make agency decisions more susceptible to challenge in the courts.

Akin senior counsel Scott Johnson will present part of a live webinar with Strafford entitled “PURPA Rules: FERC Revisions Regarding QF Power Sales, Requirements for Utilities, QF Certification, State Authority.” The panel will provide in-depth analysis of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) regulations under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA), recent revisions to those regulations and appeals of those revisions. It will discuss critical aspects of the rules to encourage the development of qualifying small power production facilities and cogeneration facilities (QFs), requirements for electric utilities, state authority to set rates in QF power sales contracts and modification of FERC’s “one-mile rule.” It will also address changes to a utility’s obligation to purchase QF output, QF certifications and other important aspects of FERC’s PURPA regulations. The webinar is approved for CLE credit and will take place on Thursday, April 18, from 1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. ET. Please click here for more information and to register.

On March 21, 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission) issued its Compensation for Reactive Power Within the Standard Power Factor Range Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,¹ which proposes to prohibit generators from receiving compensation from transmission providers for providing reactive power within the standard power factor range or “deadband.” The NOPR, if adopted, would represent a departure from the Commission’s current policy that requires transmission providers to compensate generators for providing reactive power within the deadband if the transmission provider pays its own or affiliated generation for reactive power.² The Commission’s proposal to eliminate reactive power compensation comes at a time when numerous markets are facing imminent resource adequacy shortfalls as a result of the retirement of existing generation resources.³

March 26, 2024 is the deadline for comments on a Notice of Inquiry issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC" or "Commission") at the end of 2023 on whether the Commission should modify its policies respecting the availability of blanket authorizations under Section 203(a)(2) of the Federal Power Act ("FPA"), including its evaluation of whether an investor has the ability to control a utility.

On February 29, 2024, President Joe Biden nominated three individuals to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission): Judy W. Chang (Democrat), David Rosner (Democrat) and Lindsay S. See (Republican). As noted in the White House announcement, “[b]y statute, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shall be composed of five members, with no more than three from the same political party,” and Lindsay S. See “is the nominee recommended by the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.”

On October 19, 2023, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to submit new or modified Reliability Standards that address the impacts of inverter-based resources (IBRs) on the reliable operation of the Bulk-Power System¹ to “protect the grid as the nation makes the transition to expanded use of clean energy technologies.”² The Final Rule also addresses certain IBRs connected to the distribution system that in the aggregate have a material impact on the Bulk-Power System (IBR-DERs).³ Broadly speaking, IBRs are “power electronic devices [used] to change the direct current power produced by generators into alternating current power that is then transmitted on the bulk electric system,”⁴ and they are common to solar, wind, battery storage and fuel cell facilities, among others. Because such resources “respond to grid disturbances differently from traditional [synchronous] generation resources such as hydropower, nuclear, coal or natural gas plants,” FERC determined that they require different Reliability Standards “to ensure IBRs support reliability in the same manner as traditional generation resources.”⁵ We previously covered other FERC actions to address the potential impact of such resources here.