Regulation and Policy

Find papers and presentations on all regulation and policy topics, or specifically on the topics of the EPAct; FERC rulings and reports; market "manipulation;" mergers, market power, and antitrust; national energy policy; regulation, governance, and judicial review; state and regional activities; and public power. 

 

Regulation and Policy

Regulation, Governance and Judicial Review

Brown, Ashley. “The Duty of Regulators to Have Ex Parte Communications.” The Electricity Journal 29, no. 9 (2016): 27-30. Publisher's VersionAbstract
By confining regulators to judicial constraints when they are acting in a legislative capacity, the Herculean task of directing the path of electricity restructuring is being undertaken under rules that require decision-makers to be utterly passive and only minimally inquisitive. Regulators should be free, when acting in their quasi-legislative capacities, to act like legislators and not like judges.
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EPAct

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FERC Rulings and Reports

Gavan, John C., and Rob Gramlich. John C. Gavan and Rob Gramlich - A New State-Federal Cooperation Agenda for Regional and Interregional Transmission, 2021. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Excerpt from the Introduction:

The experience of grid operators and planners in the United States and around the world has shown that both decarbonization and power system resilience will require large-scale regional and inter-regional trans- mission expansion. In the United States, transmission planning, cost recovery, and siting are all subject to both state and federal jurisdiction. To meet the challenge of expanding transmission to implement decarbonization, the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) recently announced the Joint Federal-State Task Force on Electric Transmission to focus on this issue.1 Resolving issues of siting and cost recovery for interstate electric transmission lines will encourage constructive state-federal cooperation. The task force and related regional and national coordination among the states, FERC, the Department of Energy (DOE), and federally regulated transmission providers will be critical to ensuring a resilient and clean power system.

Hogan, William W.CarbonPricing inOrganizedWholesale Electricity Markets .” In, 2020. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Excerpt from the Introduction:

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this technical conference. My comments here and during the conference are my own and do not represent the opinions of anyone else. The focus of my remarks will be on carbon pricing and the interactions with short-term electricity markets as found in the organized wholesale markets in the United States. I do not address the design and implementation questions focused on investments and resource adequacy that underpin capacity markets.

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Market "Manipulation"

Hogan, William W.Cross-product Manipulation in Electricity Markets, Microstructure Models and Asymmetric Information.” In, 2019. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Electricity market manipulation enforcement actions have moved from conventional analysis of generator market power in real-time physical markets to material allegations of sustained crossproduct price manipulation in forward financial markets. A major challenge is to develop and apply forward market analytical frameworks and models. This task is more difficult than for the real-time market. An adaptation of cross-product manipulation models from cash-settled financial markets provides an existence demonstration under uncertainty and asymmetric information. The implications of this analysis include strong empirical predictions about necessary randomized strategies that are not likely to be observed or sustainable in electricity markets. Absent these randomized strategies and other market imperfections, the means for achieving sustained forward market price manipulation remains unexplained.

Keywords: market manipulation; electricity markets; limits to arbitrage; asymmetric information

McBride Johnson, Philip. “Turf Wars - an Essay.” In, 2010.Abstract
McBride Johnson, Philip. Turf Wars" - an Essay. Distributed to the Harvard Electricity Policy Group, Fifty-Ninth Plenary Session. Cambridge, MA. May 20, 2010. 4 pages."

Mergers, Market Power and Anti-Trust

Linares, Pedro, Francisco Javier Santos, Mariano Ventosa, and Luis Lapiedra. “Incorporating oligopoly, CO2 emissions trading and green certificates into a power generation expansion model.” Automatica 44, no. 6 (2008): 1608-1620. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper presents a generation expansion model for the power sector which incorporates several features that make it very interesting for application to current electricity markets: it considers the possible oligopolistic behavior of firms, and incorporates relevant policy instruments, carbon emissions trading and tradable green certificates. It combines powerful traditional tools related to the detailed system operation with techniques for modeling the economic market equilibrium and a formulation for the resolution of the emissions permit and tradable green certificates market equilibrium. The model is formulated as a Linear Complementarity Problem (LCP) which allows the optimization problem for each firm considering the power, carbon and green certificate markets to be solved simultaneously. The model has been implemented in GAMS. An application to the Spanish power system is also presented.

National Energy Policy

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Public Power

Rosenberg, William, Dwight Alpern, and Michael Walker. “Financing IGCC - 3 Party Covenant.” In, 2004. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper describes a 3 Party Covenant financing and regulatory program aimed at reducing financing costs and providing a risk-tolerant investment structure to stimulate initial deployment of five to ten Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) coal generation power plants during this decade. The 3 Party Covenant is an arrangement between the federal government, state Public Utility Commission (PUC), and equity investor that serves to lower IGCC cost of capital by reducing the cost of debt, raising the debt/equity ratio, and minimizing construction financing costs. The 3 Party Covenant would reduce the cost of capital component of energy costs from new IGCC facilities by 34 percent and the overall cost of energy about 20 percent, making the technology cost competitive with pulverized coal (PC) and natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) generation.
Rosenberg, William. Financing IGCC - 3 Party Covenant, 2004. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This paper describes a 3 Party Covenant financing and regulatory program aimed at reducing financing costs and providing a risk-tolerant investment structure to stimulate initial deployment of five to ten Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) coal generation power plants during this decade. The 3 Party Covenant is an arrangement between the federal government, state Public Utility Commission (PUC), and equity investor that serves to lower IGCC cost of capital by reducing the cost of debt, raising the debt/equity ratio, and minimizing construction financing costs. The 3 Party Covenant would reduce the cost of capital component of energy costs from new IGCC facilities by 34 percent and the overall cost of energy about 20 percent, making the technology cost competitive with pulverized coal (PC) and natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) generation.
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Regulation, Governance and Judicial Review

Brown, Ashley. “The Duty of Regulators to Have Ex Parte Communications.” The Electricity Journal 29, no. 9 (2016): 27-30. Publisher's VersionAbstract
By confining regulators to judicial constraints when they are acting in a legislative capacity, the Herculean task of directing the path of electricity restructuring is being undertaken under rules that require decision-makers to be utterly passive and only minimally inquisitive. Regulators should be free, when acting in their quasi-legislative capacities, to act like legislators and not like judges.
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  • 1 of 3
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State and Regional Activities

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