Utility Dive reported on six state utility commissioners who are pressing FERC to prioritize its resilience docket, including perspective of AEE's Managing Director and General Counsel Jeff Dennis. Read excerpts below and the entire Utility Dive piece here. 

Six state regulators are pressing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to prioritize its resilience docket, citing concerns over rapid coal plant retirements, Bloomberg first reported Monday. Utility commissioners from Wyoming, Montana, Alabama, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky wrote separate letters to FERC, asking the commission to take action on the resilience docket opened in response to its unanimous rejection of the Department of Energy's bid to subsidize coal and nuclear resources.

FERC had largely kicked the question of resilience over to regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs). "The fact that FERC hasn't acted in an [administrative] docket like this is not particularly unusual," Jeff Dennis, managing director and general counsel at Advanced Energy Economy told Utility Dive. "It really just reflects the fact that the inquiry didn't reveal any need for FERC to take any action..."

But because the docket is an inquiry, not a proposed rule that the commission could take final action on, or a show cause order where it could direct ISOs and RTOs to do something based on evidence found, there doesn't seem to be any obvious action FERC could take, said Dennis.

The state commissioners "ask for a decision on the docket and an order in a timely fashion, but it's unclear to me what decisions they would like to see made or what order FERC could even issue," he said.

Read the entire Utility Dive piece here.