As federal lawmakers and policymakers ratchet up the rhetoric on federal authority over states, state interests are struggling with what, if anything, to try doing about it.
"Trump" is one of those words to be avoided, generally, in negotiations. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used it Monday in talking about federal versus state authority to site transmission lines. Referring to state utility regulators' opposition to federal preemption of that authority, Reid said, "Whatever we pass at the federal level trumps all that." Then there's also the federal stimulus bill's prescription for state regulatory action to remove utilities' disincentives to take energy efficiency action. And there's the prospect that the same kind of provision could be in legislation requiring deployment of renewable power.
Charles Gray, executive director of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, suggested Tuesday that all this activity is regulated utilities' way of getting some things done that states simply have not done.
State regulators are concerned that investor-owned utilities are trying to have Congress legislate matters that have always been the regulators' domain, Gray said at the American Public Power Association's annual legislative rally in Washington. The regulators don't generally have authority over public power utilities, but Gray could speak about the plethora of state-federal issues suddenly blossoming in the capital.
IOUs' persistence is seen as a "core attack" on states' roles, Gray said. NARUC will be closely following the debate on a federal renewable energy standard, he said, to see if utilities make similar attempts to require recovery of costs associated with renewables deployment. Having Congress legislate seems to be utilities' way of addressing the many uncertainties they face, he said.
On the federal transmission siting authority, "I'm not convinced that more needs to be done," Gray said, beyond the backstop siting authority provided to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. And speaking of that authority, he noted that last week's 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision limiting what FERC can do "muddies the waters" on the federal-state debate. The waters are indeed muddy right now, but it looks as if any number of people in Congress -- Senator Reid among them, and Representatives Sensenbrenner and Inslee too, they said today at a hearing in the Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee -- plan to clear them up soon.
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