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The Biden-Harris Administration recently interrupted the normal, export-friendly operation of the Natural Gas Act, triggering a lawsuit against the administration by fifteen states. The White House announced 'a temporary pause […]

This article compares potential revenue from electric storage in retail and wholesale electric markets. The retail value can be extracted when storage responds to time-of-day retail prices. The wholesale value is enabled by the recent US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Order 2222, which requires regional transmission operators (RTOs) to allow distributed storage behind the meter to participate in wholesale electric markets. To quantify the value of these markets, we use realistic time-of-day rates and market prices in one RTO's ancillary service market. Formulae are developed to estimate the value of behind-the-meter storage in wholesale and retail markets, using an example electric vehicle in a fleet setting. The formulae are also used to compare whether or not net metering is available and different charging rates. The aggregate national storage behind the retail meter is very large, given the projected growth of electric vehicles. Our findings indicate the revenue from wholesale markets can be significantly more than that of retail opportunities. However, the potential in either retail or wholesale markets is currently limited by both state policy and incomplete RTO implementation of FERC orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As John R. Commons taught us nearly 100 years ago and has been reinforced by scholars like Warren Samuels in the middle and late twentieth century, legal and economic systems co—evolve with each other and co—determine the performance we observe. In a recent Supreme Court Case, PennEast Pipeline Co. v. New Jersey, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a pipeline developer may use the federal government's legal power of eminent domain to seize state property, should they obtain the appropriate certificate from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). A Hohfeldian jural relations framework as developed by Klammer and Scorsone is used to explore the social nature of property as illustrated in the case, highlighting the implications of differing interpretations of the Natural Gas Act and other legal doctrine for the State of New Jersey, PennEast, the FERC, and other property interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article explores how the D.C. Circuit's decision in City of Oberlin, Ohio v. FERC (2022) (Oberlin II) will impact future natural gas pipelines and potentially even future hydrogen infrastructure. While the decision reinforced support for integrating North American natural gas infrastructure, given uncertainties in how the United States will regulate the emerging hydrogen industry, there is a chance that the decision could be more expansive than what initially meets the eye. By continuing down the path of supporting North American energy integration, Congress, federal courts, and administrative agencies will help prepare the United States for an uncertain energy future. Despite aiding the often-criticized natural gas industry, the Oberlin II decision is a win for North American energy integration, which will be needed to speed up any transition away from these fossil fuels. Thus, this Article argues that the Oberlin II decision and subsequent FERC decisions that take the Oberlin II holding a step further should be maintained and built upon. Tackling climate change and transitioning to cleaner energy sources will take bold steps and having administrative systems in place that support this transition is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Biden Administration appreciates the deleterious consequences associated with unregulated natural gas usage, while it seemingly shies away from pursuing progressive measures against the industry. But a 2050 future characterized by zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions demands that here in the United States and globally, we arrest methane emissions as swiftly as possible. Methane emissions, after all, over the next several decades are far more potent than emissions from coal. And yet, our news is populated with stories warning of increased methane emissions and corresponding initiatives to reduce or eliminate them. To be sure, in April 2023, the White House announced a methane finance sprint to curb emissions, joining a host of other programs targeting methane. It even acknowledged how reducing such emissions would “have an outsized impact on nearterm warming.” Unfortunately, little about these existing initiatives afford sufficient comfort that natural gas will not simply replace coal as the fuel cabining our race to reach a 43% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030, the target of the 2015 Paris Agreement, or a net zero energy economy by 2035 or a zero-emission economy by 2050—targets of the Biden Administration. This Essay probes the array of assumptions animating the Administration’s continued support for natural gas. It chronicles how we may be creeping toward another of what I term energy folly, championing a fuel ostensibly necessary today to support a reliable electric grid and spur the nascent yet emerging hydrogen economy. And it explores how natural gas proponents assume that several initiatives will diminish the climate change impacts from methane emissions, counseling against aggressive programs for reducing continued investment in natural gas infrastructure. But as this natural gas infrastructure continues to grow, possibly becoming a future-stranded asset or chilling our willingness to wean ourselves off natural gas, our existing regulatory system avoids any meaningful inquiry into the role of natural gas from now until 2030, 2035, or 2050. To remedy this, I suggest we ought to engage in this inquiry by constructing appropriate institutional mechanisms capable of asking the right questions. State regulatory commissions, the Department of Energy, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) ought to appreciate how their decisions today can solidify possibly problematic natural gas infrastructure long after immediate need for the natural gas has faded. To avert this scenario, they should be capable of scrutinizing whether any proposal involving natural gas is necessary not merely immediately or the following year, but five or more years later as well. Regional entities could be formed to aid the endeavor; those entities could be tasked with combining annual analyses by the Energy Information Administration with similar regional assessments and projections on the need for natural gas not just immediately but for the entire physical and economic life of the infrastructure. This ought to include requiring any proposal for new natural gas infrastructure to accept a decommissioning or transition plan. FERC, for instance, should demand from applicants an enforceable timeline for achieving zero emissions, whether through a commitment toward carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) or an agreement to transition away from natural gas and toward hydrogen, or otherwise agreeing to shutter the infrastructure. Climate change is propelling us into a perilous future, and yet we continue to promote natural gas with unverified assumptions about how we can arrest methane emissions. Those assumptions may well prove our prescience. Natural gas may well provide a catalyst capable of transitioning our energy systems toward a much more dominant hydrogen-based economy. But a gambit with natural gas is risky. Our future, consequently, warrants being cautious and charging our institutions with the obligation to prevent natural gas from becoming the proverbial sword of Damocles, preventing our transition to a zero-carbon economy sooner rather than later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-of-Use (TOU) tariff is one of effective price-based demand response strategy, which can guide consumers to relieve the load peak pressure of power system and tap demand-side response potential. However, without considering the impact of pricing, improper peak-valley time period schemes may lead to a decrease in power supply reliability and an increase in operation costs of the power system. Therefore, this paper presents a peak-valley time period partition scheme of TOU tariff based on fuzzy equivalence relation clustering (FERC) algorithm. First, the solving steps and corresponding mathematical models of FERC algorithm are given, such as the characteristic indicator fuzzy set determined by the membership function and the fuzzy equivalence matrix. Secondly, the peak-valley characteristics of the load are first analyzed, and then a peak-valley period partition clustering based on FERC algorithm is proposed by combining semi-trapezoid membership functions and partition criterion constraints. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified under a typical daily load in Hunan province. The results show that the proposed method can not only accurately reflect the peak valley characteristics of the load curve, but also effectively improve the calculation speed and convergence of peak-valley time period partition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Cooperative federalism' is not just a model of federalism; it is a model of administration. From health care to air quality to emergency management, transportation, immigration, national security, and more, cooperative federalism is the regulatory model of choice. But scholars have yet to conceptualize a cooperative administrative law for cooperative federalism. As this Article shows, however, federal and state bureaucracies have devised intricate strategies for coordinating their implementation of the programs they joindy administer. The Article begins to elaborate cooperative federalism's unseen administrative apparatus by focusing on its distinctive form of legislative rulemaking, the workhorse of administrative law. I show that inside cooperative programs, federal and state agencies jointly promulgate binding legislative rules through a cross-governmental process I call 'coordinated rulemaking.' Because it crisscrosses governmental boundaries, this novel form of rulemaking has a legal logic, process, and mode of codification that diverges from the notice-and-comment rulemaking model so scrutinized within the federal administrative state. After documenting the use of coordinated rulemaking in some of our largest and most important cooperative regulatory programs--including Medicaid, the Clean Air Act, public education, highway construction, and national-security surveillance, among many others--I argue that these rich practices resist the standard heuristics used to conceptualize the administrative relationship between the federal government and states within cooperative programs. In their place, I develop an alternative conception of the administrative scaffolding in cooperative federalism programs. Finally, I sketch out some of the puzzles and promises of coordinated rulemaking--its implications for black-letter administrative doctrines, including Chevron deference, arbitrary-and-capricious review, and the like--and, by setting the practice I document here in theoretical frame, asking what it reveals about how federalism reshapes the legal architecture of administrative law when our governments pursue regulatory projects together., ARTICLE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1323 1. COORDINATED RULEMAKING IN PRACTICE 1330 A. Medicaid and Coordinated Rulemaking: The Basic Template 1333 1. Rulemaking in Context 1334 2. Parameters 1336 3. Proposals 1337 [...]

MutL family proteins contain an N‐terminal ATPase domain (NTD), an unstructured interdomain linker, and a C‐terminal domain (CTD), which mediates constitutive dimerization between subunits and often contains an endonuclease active site. Most MutL homologs direct strand‐specific DNA mismatch repair by cleaving the error‐containing daughter DNA strand. The strand cleavage reaction is poorly understood; however, the structure of the endonuclease active site is consistent with a two‐ or three‐metal ion cleavage mechanism. A motif required for this endonuclease activity is present in the unstructured linker of Mlh1 and is conserved in all eukaryotic Mlh1 proteins, except those from metamonads, which also lack the almost absolutely conserved Mlh1 C‐terminal phenylalanine‐glutamate‐arginine‐cysteine (FERC) sequence. We hypothesize that the cysteine in the FERC sequence is autoinhibitory, as it sequesters the active site. We further hypothesize that the evolutionary co‐occurrence of the conserved linker motif with the FERC sequence indicates a functional interaction, possibly by linker motif‐mediated displacement of the inhibitory cysteine. This role is consistent with available data for interactions between the linker motif with DNA and the CTDs in the vicinity of the active site. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of public ownership in moderating the effect of earning persistence and growth opportunities on the future earnings responses’ coefficient is the focus of this study. Understanding the background of these concepts provides context for the research. This study aims to determine the role of public ownership in moderating the effect of earning persistence and growth opportunities on future earnings responses coefficient. This research uses companies in the Consumer Cyclicals sector and the Consumer Non-Cyclicals sector during the 2018-2021 period. Sampling method with purposive sampling. The results of this study indicate that earnings persistence affects the Future Earning Responses Coefficient. Growth Opportunities have no effect on the Future Earning Responses Coefficient. The role of public ownership is able to strengthen the effect of earning persistence and Growth Opportunities on Future Earning Responses Coefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]