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Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative, said that “regardless of whether Congress passes clean energy legislation, the Democratic-led FERC should choose to wield its authority to support a clean energy agenda.” He asserted that FERC had broad discretion to do so given that it operates under flexible legal standards and already has transmission oversight and market regulation authorities.

In the meantime, observers should not expect Danly to initiate proactive rulemakings in the same way FERC did for energy storage and distributed energy resources following the 2016 election, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

The group’s April 14 petition for a declaratory order from FERC would effectively “end net metering as we know it,” Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative, wrote on Twitter.

“Most PJM states require utilities to meet renewable energy targets or support specific clean energy resources, such as nuclear plants or yet-to-be-constructed offshore wind farms,” Ari Peskoe, Director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard’s Environmental & Energy Law Program, said in a blog post Tuesday.

Meanwhile, comments submitted by Harvard University’s Electricity Law Initiative argued that the NOPR “pays lip service” to PURPA’s requirement that the commission issue rules it “determines necessary to encourage” the development of QFs. “The commission suggests that in response to industry changes it may divorce the statute from its plain meaning and issue rules that will restrain QF growth,” Harvard said. “But Congress’s mandate to the commission is not contingent on industry conditions and does not expire.” (FERC docket RM19-15)

Ari Peskoe, director of the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative, suggested that such filings could run into trouble if stakeholders view a proposal to price carbon as expanding too far beyond the RTO’s core mission, particularly if the RTO sets the price.