NARUC


Will financial system regulatory reforms make energy price hedging costly – or impossible?

That was the question experts grappled with – and disagreed over – at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) meeting in Washington, DC this week. Keep reading →


As utilities generate more electricity from natural gas, the potential is emerging for freak weather or other events to cause problems for both delivery systems and create a cascading regional disaster, industry officials and regulators concluded in a “stress test scenario” played out in Washington, DC this past Sunday.

Planning to avoid such events, in which problems in the gas system aggravate problems in the electric system and vice-versa, is complicated by the two energy systems’ significantly different regulatory structures, officials said. Keep reading →

FERC, NARUC Launch Forum on Reliability, Environment http://naruc.org/?pr=291 NARUC


Utility customers face a “perfect storm” of sharply higher bills for electricity and natural gas because trillions of dollars in capital expenditure will be needed to upgrade aging US infrastructure and comply with environmental rules, according to the new head of America’s utility regulators’ association.

David Wright, incoming president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, predicted ratepayers will bear the brunt of huge expenditure needs for such improvements as installing smart grid technology, controlling power station emissions, and replacing old pipelines over coming decades. Keep reading →


Power companies threatened US power regulators with the potential of rolling blackouts and unreliable electricity supply if they are forced to comply with what they claim are tight deadlines for meeting new emissions rules.

The companies told a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hearing they need more time to comply with new environmental regulations that would require the retirement or retrofit of hundreds of coal-fired plants. Emissions of mercury and other pollutants from those units would exceed the new standards. Keep reading →


A Department of Energy fee that costs nuclear power utilities some $750 million a year should be suspended because a nuclear-waste program the fee is designed to pay for does not exist, opponents said in a new court filing.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy organization for the industry, urged a Washington DC appeals court to order the DOE to stop collecting the fee for the federally mandated Nuclear Waste Fund which grows by about $1 billion a year and is expected to total $28.3 billion by the end of fiscal 2012. Keep reading →

DOE-FERC Grid Coordination Effort Positive, States Say http://bit.ly/pSLVMJ @NARUC


Department of Energy plans to give federal regulators more authority over the siting of electricity transmission lines would delay development, provoke lawsuits, and damage federal-state relations, the utility commissioners’ trade group said.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners blasted the proposal to hand more power to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, saying it ignores court rulings and the intent of Congress, and would give the industry, rather than the government, control over the approval process. Keep reading →

Page 2 of 212