Speaking Energy

On June 28, 2024, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., which for 40 years required court deference to reasonable agency interpretations of federal statutes in certain circumstances, even when the reviewing court would read the statute differently. The Court ended “Chevron deference” and held that courts “must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority.” In doing so, the Court upended a longstanding principle of administrative law that is likely to make agency decisions more susceptible to challenge in the courts.

We are pleased to share a recording of Akin’s recently presented “FERC Order No. 2023-A: What’s New and What’s Next?” webinar, along with the program materials.

2023 saw two megadeals in the oil & gas industry that have led to calls from environmental interest groups for the FTC to intervene despite a lack of obvious antitrust issues. Whether the FTC will sue to block the deals remains to be seen.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the “Commission”) recently issued Order Nos. 896 and 897 (collectively, the “Reliability Orders”),¹ which are two final rules designed to bolster electric grid reliability during extreme heat and cold weather events that “may cause unacceptable risk to life and economic harm,” especially during periods of unexpectedly high demand on the Bulk-Power System.²

We are pleased to share a recording of Akin’s recently presented “FERC’s Interconnection Rule: What’s In, What’s Out and Does It Matter?” webinar, along with the presentation materials.

Akin partners Matt Kapinos, Shariff Barakat and Sam Guthrie will be moderating panels and presenting at Infocast’s joint conferences CCS/Decarbonization Project Development, Finance & Investment and RNG & SAF Capital Markets that will explore current market perspectives, the latest developments, and what is on the horizon for carbon capture and renewable natural gas projects. The conference will take place July 24-26, 2023, in Houston, TX. Matt, Shariff and Sam would like to invite our Akin friends to receive a 15% discount to attend.

On July 5, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Development (OCED) announced a Request for Information to inform the DOE’s efforts to design a demand-side support mechanism for its Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs Program (H2Hubs). Information obtained through this process will support a future Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) entitled “Implementing Entity (or Entities) for Demand-side Support Mechanism for Clean Hydrogen Hub Projects” that the DOE expects to issue later this summer/early fall. The DOE ultimately intends to commit up to $1 billion to fund entities implementing a demand-side support mechanism to “facilitate bankable clean hydrogen demand” for the H2Hubs to “enable private sector financing and expedite progress to Final Investment Decision for H2Hubs.” This follows the $6-7 billion commitment the DOE initially announced in 2022 for the H2Hubs.