The petition attracted criticism from a various group of vitality commerce organizations, free market and environmental teams, in addition to stat
The petition attracted criticism from a various group of vitality commerce organizations, free market and environmental teams, in addition to state regulators and officers. Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds despatched a letter in opposition, as did former Democratic FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff. The pinnacle of a gaggle representing state utility regulators known as the petition a “full frontal assault on state authority.” Photo voltaic firms mentioned it dangers decimating the residential photo voltaic sector — and the huge quantity present rooftop photo voltaic contracts which are constructed on the preparations.
“Opposition to this petition is pervasive and the authorized and jurisdictional issues the petition would create are unattainable to miss,” mentioned Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Photo voltaic Power Industries Affiliation. “It’s exhausting to fathom why FERC would need to overturn prior choices and wrest regulatory jurisdiction away from state policymakers.”
The Nationwide Affiliation of Regulatory Utility Commissioners additionally took goal on the NERA submitting, calling it an “summary assault on internet metering legal guidelines, divorced from any concrete controversy.”
NARUC leaders and different critics have additionally questioned the timing of the petition, which was filed in mid-April because the variety of Covid-19 instances across the nation spiked. In a 2014 presentation to utility executives, one of many petition’s authors — Steptoe & Johnson associate David Raskin — urged internet metering opponents to decide on the proper second to problem the coverage at FERC.
“Timing: Political concerns are necessary,” reads the final line of the presentation, which was not beforehand disclosed publicly. Raskin didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The Edison Electrical Institute, a commerce group for investor-owned utilities, has opposed internet metering for years and labored with Raskin as not too long ago as 2015 on a Supreme Court docket case. However EEI didn’t file feedback on the NERA proposal and has not too long ago distanced itself from the Steptoe lawyer and NERA itself, which has a dozen members however doesn’t disclose their identities.
An EEI spokesperson confirmed that Raskin spoke at a gathering of the group’s Authorized Committee within the spring of 2014, however didn’t recall particulars of his presentation. The group’s regulatory group plans to proceed to look at the problem.
“Whereas EEI has lengthy taken problem with retail internet vitality metering as each a regressive and poor public coverage device that unfairly shifts electrical energy prices on to essentially the most susceptible prospects, we won’t be submitting substantive feedback presently,” EEI Regulatory Affairs Director Adam Benshoff mentioned in an announcement.
Municipally owned utilities and electrical cooperatives, nonetheless, joined the requires FERC to reject the anti-net metering petition.
“[The American Public Power Association] strongly believes that FERC ought to dismiss the NERA petition outright (with out reaching its deserves) because it doesn’t current an acceptable case for a declaratory ruling,” mentioned Delia Patterson, senior vp and common counsel at APPA. “If it decides to handle the deserves of the petition, FERC ought to deny the petition and reaffirm its view that federal jurisdiction beneath the FPA and PURPA is just not implicated when a buyer taking part in a retail internet metering program is a internet client of vitality over the relevant billing interval.”
Solely a handful of organizations and people filed feedback supporting the NERA petition, although paperwork continued to trickle into FERC’s eLibrary late on the June 15 deadline. The Heartland Institute, which has sought to dispute the scientific neighborhood’s consensus on human-induced local weather change, filed a quick remark focusing on the beneficiaries of internet metering preparations.
“The USA already has loads of different welfare packages for the upper-middle class,” the group wrote. “It doesn’t want this one.”