Law Commons^™

Climate Risk In The Electricity Sector: Legal Obligations To Advance Climate Resilience Planning By Electric Utilities, Romany M. Webb, Michael Panfil, Sarah Ladin

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Electricity generation, transmission and distribution, and load are all impacted by weather patterns. Electric system assets have been designed for historic weather conditions, with the goal of ensuring reliability and quick recovery following extreme events. However, climate change is causing major shifts in historic weather patterns and more frequent and severe extremes, which are creating new risk profiles for the electric system. Proactive climate resilience planning by electric utilities to identify, respond, and rationally allocate these climate risks is thus increasingly salient. This paper argues that it is also legally required.

Recently published industry studies demonstrate that accurate, specific, and …

Climate Change Impacts On The Bulk Power System: Assessing Vulnerabilities And Planning For Resilience, Justin Gundlach, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

As the scale, speed, and implications of climate change come into focus, stakeholders in the electricity sector are finding it increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye. However, many have opted to attend to climate impacts in a piecemeal fashion, often merely responding to particular extreme events – or types of extreme events, such as coastal storms or floods – and failing to consider the larger phenomenon. This is true of the bulk power system (BPS) in regions overseen by Independent System Operators and Regional Transmission Organizations (collectively, ISO/RTOs), none of which have comprehensively assessed their systems’ vulnerabilities to climate …

Distributed Energy Resource Participation In Wholesale Markets: Lessons From The California Iso, Justin Gundlach, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This article examines CAISO’s DER program after its first year of operation. It draws on written comments submitted to CAISO in the course of program development and on interviews the authors conducted with stakeholders – including active and potential DERPs, investor-owned utilities, and customer groups – to identify “barriers” to program participation. Irrespective of whether these barriers are appropriate – e.g., to ensure continued wholesale system reliability as DER penetration increases – they have clearly prevented the DER program fulfilling CAISO’s stated goal. The barriers should, therefore, be considered by other ISO/RTOs in developing programs with similar goals. The authors …

Microgrids And Resilience To Climate-Driven Impacts On Public Health, Justin Gundlach

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

“Resilience” has burst into the lexicons of several policy areas in recent years, owing in no small part to climate change’s amplification of extreme events that severely disrupt the operation of natural, social, and engineered systems. Fostering resilience means anticipating severe disruptions and planning, investing, and designing so that such disruptions, which are certain to occur, are made shallower in depth and shorter in duration. Thus a resilient system or community can continue functioning despite disruptive events, return more swiftly to routine function following disruption, and incorporate new information so as to improve operations in extremis and speed future restorations. …

Carbon Pricing In New York Iso Markets: Federal And State Issues, Justin Gundlach, Romany M. Webb

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Does the law permit the New York Independent Service Operator (NYISO) to incorporate, directly or indirectly, a carbon price into New York State’s wholesale electricity market? And, if so, what is the appropriate design of a carbon pricing scheme for the NYISO market? For example, at what level should a carbon price be set and when/how should it be adjusted? How should the revenues generated by such a price be used? What impact (if any) will it have on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) and New York’s Clean Energy Standard? This working paper explores answers to those questions with …

Federal Implementation Plans And The Path To Clean Power, Daniel Selmi

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Promulgated under the Clean Air Act in October 2015, the Clean Power Plan (“CPP”) requires states to significantly reduce carbon emissions from existing power plants and is the centerpiece of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (“EPA”) response to global warming. Many states have filed lawsuits challenging the CPP and some states have vowed that, if those suits are unsuccessful, they will refuse to implement it. In turn, EPA has proposed rules that would implement the CPP by imposing a “federal implementation plan” (“FIP”) upon those recalcitrant states under the authority of the Clean Air Act. Thus, the success of the CPP …

Legal Tools For Climate Adaptation Advocacy: The Electric Grid And Its Regulators – Ferc And State Public Utility Commissions, Payal Nanavati, Justin Gundlach

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The electric grid connects electricity generators to consumers. State and federal regulators are tasked with ensuring that consumers have access to safe and reliable electricity at just and reasonable rates. The requirements of this task have and will continue to transform as technologies change and as the impacts of climate change alter the context in which the electric grid operates. Thus, regulators who make adapting to climate change a priority will better fulfill their mandate to ensure that utilities provide consumers with safe and reliable electricity at just and reasonable rates. Yet some regulators do not recognize how closely adaptation …

Electricity Sector Adaptation To Heat Waves, Sofia Aivalioti

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Electricity is very important for human settlements and a key accelerator for development and prosperity. As heat waves become more frequent and intense the reliability and efficiency of the electricity systems is threatened. Increased temperatures have adverse effects on electricity generation, transmission, distribution and demand. The high temperatures cause intentional or unintentional brownouts and blackouts, which come at high costs for people and economies. The case studies in this analysis highlight the importance of heat wave impacts to the electricity sector and the need for adaptation. The electricity sector requires a holistic approach for adaptation that comprises technological, behavioral and …

Federal Regulatory Barriers To Grid-Deployed Energy Storage, Andrew Meyer

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Until recently, the most advanced form of grid-deployed energy storage involved pumping water up a hill. But “newer storage technologies like flywheels and chemical batteries have recently achieved technological maturity and are well into successful pilot stages and, in some cases, commercial operation”. If widely adopted these new energy storage technologies will fundamentally alter the operation of our electricity system

Envisioning Resilient Electrical Infrastructure: A Policy Framework For Incorporating Future Climate Change Into Electricity Sector Planning, Sam C.A. Nierop

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Climate change needs to be incorporated in future designs of the electricity sector. This paper argues for a policy framework in which utilities take the lead by performing an electrical climate change impact assessment that evaluates to what extent utilities’ electrical assets are vulnerable to future climate change. Based on this assessment, electrical climate change adaptation plans should be formulated by the utility in cooperation with utility regulators, municipalities and supralocal governments. A collaborative process is essential, because adaptation measures need to be tailored to the regional circumstances and many types of adaptation measures require governmental approval. In order for …

Public Utilities Commissions & Energy Efficiency: A Handbook Of Legal And Regulatory Tools For Commissioners & Advocates, Shelley Welton, Chen Xu, Brian Troxler, Chao Huang, Andrew Kirchner, Krista Yacovone, Maria Hristova

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This handbook examines the range of legal and regulatory tools that state PUCs have to promote energy efficiency. It draws from a broad and deep body of literature on the topic, an examination of relevant state laws and regulations, and interviews with experts in the private and public sectors. The handbook may prove useful in those states that are more advanced in their energy efficiency policies by illuminating potential refinements or alternative design options in areas that prove to be sticking points. It is intended primarily, however, as a resource for those in states that are not yet as advanced …