Department of Energy May 27, 2020 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

On March 21, 2019, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a notice of inquiry seeking information and stakeholder views regarding whether, and if so how, it should modify its policies concerning the determination of the return on equity (ROE) to be used in designing jurisdictional public utility rates and whether any changes to the Commission's policies concerning public utility ROEs should be applied to interstate natural gas and oil pipelines. Concurrently with this Policy Statement, the Commission is issuing Opinion No. 569-A adopting changes to its policies concerning public utility ROEs. The Commission finds that, with certain exceptions to account for the statutory, operational, organizational and competitive differences among the industries, the policy changes adopted in Opinion No. 569-A should be applied to natural gas and oil pipelines. Accordingly, the Commission revises its policy and will determine natural gas and oil pipeline ROEs by averaging the results of the Discounted Cash Flow model and the Capital Asset Pricing Model, but will not use the Risk Premium model. In addition, the Commission clarifies its policies governing the formation of proxy groups and the treatment of outliers in proceedings addressing natural gas and oil pipeline ROEs. Finally, the Commission encourages oil pipelines to file revised FERC Form No. 6, page 700s for 2019 reflecting the revised ROE policy.

The Department of Energy (DOE) publishes this final rule to update personnel references within DOE's Office of Electricity and update an email address that is no longer in use. This final rule is needed to conform to the current organizational structure within DOE's Office of Electricity and does not otherwise substantively change the current regulations.