S&P Global Quotes Chip Cannon on Possible Biden Administration’s Impact on FERC and Electric Power Sector

Chip Cannon, head of Akin Gump’s energy regulation, markets and enforcement practice, has been quoted in the S&P Global story “Dramatic policy changes, major order reversals unlikely under a Biden-era FERC: attorneys.” The article looks at what an election victory by former Vice President Joe Biden might mean for the U.S. electric power sector and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Biden’s views on climate change are a stark reversal from those of President Trump, said Cannon. What sets him apart from those further to the left and from certain ideas in the Green New Deal, he said, is that Biden “essentially takes an all-of-the-above approach to the generation resource mix and understands that there is a need for natural gas, at least for the foreseeable future.”

Should Biden win, Cannon does not foresee a Democratic-led FERC “coming in and just simply saying that the [minimum offer price rule] doesn't apply. … It takes a long time for FERC to evaluate some of these extremely complex issues and then reach a majority of commissioners who are willing to sign off on something.”

While FERC revised regulations this summer pertaining to the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), giving states more leeway in setting the rates that utilities are required to pay qualifying facilities for their output, Cannon said Democrats would likely “be hesitant to push back too hard on the fact that, in these areas where you have competitive markets, perhaps the need for PURPA isn’t as strong.”

Still, Cannon does see some areas where a Democratic-led commission might push back, such as pricing of avoided costs in locations that do not have regional markets and modifications to the one-mile rule for determining whether multiple generating facilities should be considered part of a single facility as part of the qualifying facilities certification process.