Department of Energy January 2007 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Energy (DOE) has commenced a rulemaking to amend the existing energy conservation standards for residential water heaters, direct heating equipment, and pool heaters. On November 24, 2006, the DOE published in the Federal Register (FR) a notice of public meeting and availability of Framework Document for this rulemaking wherein it indicated that the comment period for this initial phase of the rulemaking closes on January 30, 2007. 71 FR 67825. On January 16, 2007, DOE held an informal public meeting to present its proposed methodologies for conducting the rulemaking, discuss issues relevant to the rulemaking proceeding, and initiate stakeholder interaction and the data collection process. Due to the extensive scope of material and issues raised at the meeting, some stakeholders at the public meeting requested an extension to the comment period. This notice extends the comment period to better provide opportunity for public review and comment on DOE's rulemaking approaches.

The purpose of this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is to propose permanent regulations regarding the standards of conduct consistent with the decision of the United States Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia in National Fuel Gas Supply Corporation v. FERC, 468 F.3d 831 (2006), regarding natural gas pipelines. On January 9, 2007, the Commission issued an interim rule regarding the standards of conduct in response to the court's decision. The Commission is soliciting comments regarding whether or not the interim rule should be made permanent for natural gas transmission providers. The Commission is also soliciting comments regarding comparable changes for electric utility transmission providers: specifically, whether or not the standards of conduct should govern the relationship between electric utility transmission providers and their energy affiliates. Also, the Commission is proposing to: revise the definition of marketing, sales or brokering; make permanent the changes adopted in the interim rule for risk management employees and discretionary waivers; remove the regulations that permit the transmission provider to share information necessary to maintain the operations of its transmission system with its energy affiliates; add and revise various regulations to facilitate integrated resource planning and competitive solicitations; revise the regulations to require each transmission provider to post the name of its chief compliance officer, to delete outdated references, and to require that transmission provider employees certify that they have completed standards of conduct training; and, revise the definition of affiliate regarding exempt wholesale generators.