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.

Join Akin projects & energy transition partner Ike Emehelu at Infocast’s Solar & Wind Finance & Investment Summit in Phoenix, AZ where he will moderate the “Lender Perspectives for 2024 and Beyond” panel.

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.

We are pleased to share a recording of Akin and Houlihan Lokey’s “Tax Credit Transferability: Market Trends and Technical Discussion” webinar.

Singapore’s Energy Market Authority (EMA) published the Energy 2050 Committee Report (the “Report”) on 22nd March. The committee (consisting of experts from both the public and private sectors (the “Committee”) concluded that it is feasible for Singapore’s power sector to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The content of the Report appears to indicate that hydrogen is set to play a key role in Singapore’s efforts of more broadly achieving net-zero by the government’s current target of “by or around mid-century,” as announced by the Minister for Finance, Mr Lawrence Wong, during his 2022 Budget speech in February¹. The release of the Report is timely given that Singapore is set to formally revise its Long-Term Low-Emissions Development Strategy (LEDS) later this year—the Report may serve as a precursor to the government formally setting its net-zero target at 2050.

The board of managers of PJM Interconnection, L.L.C. (PJM) has directed PJM to prepare a proposal for filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that will substantially reform the Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR) in PJM’s capacity market. After considering nine reform proposals in the PJM stakeholder process, the board has selected for filing the proposal put forth by PJM, which received the highest sector-weighted vote from PJM members. PJM has expressed a desire to have the reformed market rule in place for the next Base Residual Auction, which is scheduled for December 2021.

On July 6, 2021, the staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC) issued a whitepaper entitled “SolarWinds and Related Supply Chain Compromise – Lessons for the North American Electricity Industry.” The whitepaper “describes these major supply chain-related cyber security events and the key actions to take to secure systems”¹ and is “intended for electric industry stakeholders and vendors as they consider their next steps in continued response to the SolarWinds cyberattack”² and “other recently identified cybersecurity vulnerabilities [that] have the potential to compromise electric industry cybersecurity.”³ The whitepaper: