Overview
Federal energy regulations can make or break your electric power and natural gas projects, and even threaten the viability of your business. Skilled, savvy legal counsel can help you overcome complex regulatory challenges, secure waivers and approvals, advocate more favorable market rules and take advantage of programs and initiatives that support your strategic goals.
With strong Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and appellate capabilities, our top-ranked energy regulatory, markets and reliability team is known as the go-to practice for independent power producers (IPPs) and other competitive power companies. We work extensively with power marketers, merchant transmission developers, renewables developers, natural gas utilities and other energy industry participants and consistently play leading roles in virtually all of the major FERC proceedings affecting the competitive power sector, including major independent system operator (ISO)/regional transmission organization (RTO) market rules cases. Drawing on our extensive experience and understanding of your industry, we provide you with sophisticated insights and practical guidance on the full range of energy regulatory matters arising under relevant laws.
Those laws include:
- Federal Power Act
- Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978
- Natural Gas Act
- Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978
- Public Utility Holding Company Act of 2005
- Energy Policy Act of 2005
We make it our priority to help you achieve your goals and minimize risk by ensuring compliance with regulations and requirements arising from these and related laws. We routinely offer counsel on FERC and Department of Energy regulations, ISO/ RTO market rules, reliability requirements of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and its regional entities (including registration and audit issues), generator interconnection, reactive power compensation and other matters.
We proactively identify regulatory issues and assist you in obtaining a range of required FERC approvals and waivers in connection with transactions involving electric power and natural gas assets. We also help you prepare and submit rate filings, including those needed to obtain and maintain FERC authorization to make wholesale power sales at market-based rates, along with cost-based rate filings involving rate schedules for reactive power compensation, shared facilities agreements, reliability must-run agreements and more.
We routinely represent IPPs, trade associations and others in FERC and appellate proceedings relating to ISO/RTO market rules that can be key value drivers for existing and proposed generation projects. While disputes are not a necessary cost of doing business, they are a risk we are equipped to handle on your behalf. We have successfully represented clients in investigations and complex administrative litigation proceedings before FERC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and other federal and state regulatory bodies, as well as in related appellate and alternative dispute resolution proceedings. Our team has also pursued actions against ISOs, RTOs and vertically integrated transmission providers on a variety of transmission- and markets-related issues.
From project inception to dispute resolution, our counsel focuses on achieving the objectives of your power and natural gas projects.
