In an unpublished judgment, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a petition for review challenging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) denial of a rate filing submitted by the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) in which assumptions underlying the rate filing included that the average commercial lifespan of a hypothetical new gas-fired “peaking plant” would be 17 years, rather than the 20 years assumed in previous filings. NYISO based this assumption on New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) requirement for a zero-emissions electricity sector by 2040. The D.C. Circuit found that FERC’s rationale for its position that NYISO should continue to use a 20-year amortization period because the CLCPA did not require all fossil fuel-fired plants to cease operations by 2040 was insufficiently reasoned. The court said FERC’s precedents required NYISO to take into account currently effective laws and that FERC’s rejection of the NYISO filing based on a possibility that the CLCPA’s requirements might be altered was “squarely inconsistent” with these precedents. The court also was not persuaded by FERC’s arguments that compliance criteria for the CLCPA’s zero-emissions requirement were not finalized and that comments by NYISO’s Market Monitoring Unit suggested that the CLCPA did not require retirement of gas-fired power generators to satisfy the zero-emission requirement.

Challenge to FERC's rejection of part of the demand curve analysis filed by the New York Independent System Operator, which based its analysis on decarbonization timelines in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

Independent Power Producers of New York, Inc. v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

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D.C. Circuit Found Flaws in FERC Evaluation of New York Climate Law’s Impact on Rate Filing Assumptions

Filed

United States of America

District of Columbia

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An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

Groups  of people who are adversely affected by climate change or the response to it

A set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Justice is the ethical and political framework that addresses fairness, including issues of responsibility, rights, and structural inequity.

Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

Fossil fuel is a generic term for non-renewable energy sources such as coal, fossil gas, and oil (including crude oil, and petroleum products), that can be used for electricity and heat generation. Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons formed from pressurised and heated organic material buried over millions of years.

Molecules in the atmosphere that play a key role in the greenhouse effect by trapping heat radiating from Earth’s surface.

Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects, in order to moderate harm, increase resilience or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate change and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate change and its effects.

The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives

Either money or something of monetary value is transferred between two or more organisations, people or countries.

Fossil gas, commonly known as natural gas, is a fossil fuel consisting chiefly of methane with smaller amounts of other hydrocarbons and trace gases, found in underground deposits.

Any compulsory, unrequited payment to the government levied on corporations or individuals. This can be for environmental reasons, such as introducing a Carbon tax to set a price that emitters must pay for the greenhouse gases they emit.

Activities that involve planning, designing and building infrastructure, residential, and commercial structures.

Activities of government agencies and institutions that provide public services, enforce laws and manage public resources.

D.C. Circuit Found Flaws in FERC Evaluation of New York Climate Law’s Impact on Rate Filing Assumptions

Target

Policy instrument

Fossil fuel

Economic sector

Finance