Clean Power Plan Rules, but Utility Industry Faces Plenty of Regulatory Edicts in 2015

摘要

Historic might be the best way to describe the pace of legislative and regulatory events focused on utilities in 2015. Plenty happened that should dramatically affect the power industry for decades to come. First and foremost, of course, was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) final release of its Clean Power Plan. Years in the making, the set of targets compels states to decrease power plants' CO_2 emissions an overall 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The Clean Power Plan commanded so much attention that relatively little notice was given to other congressional work affecting the industry, perhaps because those are still pending. The Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015 and the Coal Combustion Residuals Regulation Act of 2015 have gained some support but not yet (as of press time) by both chambers nor President Obama's signature. Below is a breakdown of the possible impacts of those developments.