FERC issued two press releases on February 22, 2021, addressing energy industry issues that arose during the extreme cold weather conditions that prevailed in most of the country recently. First, FERC announced that its Office of Enforcement (OE) is examining wholesale market activity during the cold weather in electric and natural gas markets in order to determine whether market participants engaged in market manipulation or committed other violations of FERC’s rules and policies. OE’s Division of Analytics and Surveillance will examine trading and other data to determine if further investigations are appropriate. If the OE pursues investigations into the behavior of individual market participants, those investigations will be non-public.

Second, FERC announced plans to open a new proceeding to examine the effect of climate change and extreme weather events on electric reliability. The new proceeding, which has not yet been docketed, will involve public comment and a technical conference. This examination appears to be focused on regional grid operators and their efforts to ensure grid resiliency in the face of severe weather events such as droughts, extreme cold, wildfires, hurricanes, and prolonged heat waves. This action is not surprising, given the recent impacts of severe weather events and FERC Chairman Rich Glick’s consistent focus on climate change during his tenure at the Commission.

Client Alert 2021-052