CEC Issues Draft Powerplant Compliance Regulations

The California Energy Commission (“CEC”) is beginning the process to update its compliance regulations, which will affect California-based power plants. Compliance activities can be expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, compliance activities can also be the precursor to an enforcement action, so it is important for anyone with California generating facilities to not only be aware of the CEC’s regulations, but to understand the potential effects of any new compliance requirements.

CEC Staff will hold a Pre-Rulemaking Workshop on January 23, 2017 to discuss proposed amendments to its compliance regulations. The goal of the amendments is to streamline the CEC’s compliance processes and implement the following objectives:

• Allowing Staff-approved project changes as long as there are clear parameters for determining what types of modifications can be approved by Staff, and what needs to be approved by the Energy Commission.
• Clarifying what constitutes valid grounds for objection to a Staff recommendation on a request for modification.
• Ensuring timely processing of petitions for modification.
• In cases where project changes may be approved by Staff without approval by the Energy Commission, ensuring that the project with the proposed changes would still comply with all applicable laws, ordinances, regulations and standards and not have a significant impact on the environment.
• Establishing standard rules of procedure related to cost recovery billing under Public Resources Code section 25806(e).

Written comments relating to the workshop will be accepted through 5:00pm, February 3, 2017.

Posted by: Jeffery Harris and Samantha Neumyer