Energy Law Practice Flashcards

Flashcards covering the fundamental concepts, regulations, and technologies of the energy industry, including utilities, coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables.

Energy

The capacity to do work.

Electricity Generation

Activities that convert energy resources into electric current.

Centralized Generation

The conventional approach of using utility-scale generating facilities, such as power plants, to generate electricity primarily for offsite use.

Distributed Generation

The use of comparatively small facilities and devices, such as rooftop solar panels, to generate electricity primarily for onsite use.

Nameplate Capacity

A measure of a generating facility's maximum possible electricity output, usually expressed in megawatts ($MW$).

Capacity Factor

The ratio of a generating facility's actual electricity generation to its nameplate capacity.

Transmission

The transportation of electricity at relatively high voltages from generating facilities to load centers.

Load Centers

Cities or other areas that have high concentrations of electricity customers.

Fixed Charges

Fees a utility collects from a retail customer regardless of how much energy the customer consumes during a billing period.

Volumetric Charges

Charges on an electricity bill calculated based on a per-kilowatt-hour ($kWh$) rate for total energy consumed.

Renewable Energy

Energy resources whose use today does not diminish supplies available for use in the future.

Fossil Fuels

Resources like coal, oil, and subsurface natural gas that form over hundreds of thousands or millions of years and are consumed faster than they replenish.

Clean Energy

A broad term used in statutes to encompass renewables, nuclear energy, clean coal technologies, and other nonrenewable energy strategies.

Greenhouse Gases (GHGs)

Gases that trap heat in the earth's atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) and methane.

Environmental Justice

The condition achieved when all groups and individuals equally bear the adverse environmental impacts of industrial, governmental, and commercial activities regardless of race, color, national origin, or income.

Energy Democracy

A principle requiring government entities to actively engage host communities and stakeholders and provide compensation for hosting energy projects.

Natural Monopoly

An entity that can singlehandedly produce all of the output demanded within its market at a lower total cost than a collection of smaller producers.

Duty to Serve

The regulatory requirement for chartered utilities to offer electricity service to all customers within their exclusive service territory.

Ratepayers

Residential, commercial, and industrial users of electric power.

Cost-of-Service Regulation

A regulatory structure designed to prevent utilities from earning excessive profits while allowing them to earn reasonable profits by basing rates on their revenue requirement.

Revenue Requirement

The total revenue a utility needs to recoup operating expenses and earn a reasonable return on its rate base, expressed as: $R = B(r) + O$.

Rate Base

The sum of a utility's investments in capital infrastructure and physical equipment such as power plants and power lines.

Operating Expenses

A utility's expenses for noncapital items such as coal, natural gas, and employee salaries.

Gold-plating

The overspending on new electricity infrastructure by utilities to increase total profits through guaranteed rates of return.

Stranded Costs

Utility investments in capital infrastructure that become outmoded and no longer usable due to policy or market changes.

Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs)

Private electricity-distribution companies that receive exclusive charters from state regulators to provide service in specific territories.

Certificate of Convenience and Necessity

The exclusive authorization granted to an electric utility to operate within a specified geographic area.

Filed-rate Doctrine

A rule recognizing that once an electricity rate receives official regulatory approval, it has the force of law and cannot be challenged in court.

Mobile-Sierra Doctrine

A doctrine preventing a utility from using a new rate filing to unilaterally increase a customer's contracted electricity rate.

Vertically Integrated Electric Utilities

Utilities that source nearly all of the electricity they sell from their own generating facilities.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)

The primary federal regulator of wholesale electricity markets, the Western and Eastern Interconnections, and interstate natural gas and oil pipelines.

North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)

The entity designated by FERC to set and enforce reliability standards for electric-grid operators and users.

Qualifying Facilities (QFs)

Relatively small, nonutility-owned generating facilities from which utilities are required to purchase electricity under PURPA.

Avoided-cost Rates

The rates at which utilities purchase power from $QFs$, approximating the costs the utility would incur from generating that power itself.

Ad Coelum Rule

The common-law rule providing that owners of surface rights in land also own property rights in any resources, including minerals, found directly beneath the land.

Mineral Estate

The collection of all mineral rights associated with a given land parcel.

Split Estate

A situation in which the owner of the mineral estate is different from the owner of the land's surface estate.

Dominant-estate Doctrine

The common-law rule that the holder of a mineral estate is legally entitled to use as much of the surface as is reasonably necessary to explore and extract minerals.

Accommodation Doctrine

A rule providing that mineral-estate holders must not unreasonably interfere with existing surface uses if reasonable alternatives are available.

Subsidence

The sinking of the ground above a subsurface mine, which can threaten buildings and infrastructure.

Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)

The average cost per unit of energy generated across the lifetime of a power plant, expressed in dollars per $kWh$.

Just-transition Policies

Policies aimed at providing relief and transition resources to communities and workers adversely affected by the shift away from fossil-fuel energy sources.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS)

Technologies involving the capture of $CO_2$ emissions from point sources and their permanent storage underground.

Unconventional Oil

Oil trapped inside shale rock or tar sands that is extracted using intensive techniques like hydraulic fracturing.

US Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)

The area extending up to $200$ nautical miles off US coastlines where the federal government holds property rights.

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

Natural gas that has been cooled and compressed into liquid form for overseas export.

Nuclear Fission

The process of splitting large, unstable atoms to release heat and energy.

U-235

The specific uranium isotope used as fuel in most US nuclear-power plants.

The Price-Anderson Act

A federal law that limits private nuclear generators' liability for catastrophic harms and provides federal reinsurance.

Realism Doctrine

The NRC policy of assuming a host community's local government would cooperate on an emergency-evacuation plan during a meltdown, even if they refuse to cooperate prospectively.

High-level Radioactive Waste

Spent nuclear fuel that is highly radioactive and requires long-term storage in geologic repositories.

Pumped-storage Facility

A system using two reservoirs and a dam to store energy by pumping water to an upper reservoir during low demand and releasing it through turbines during high demand.

Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit (PTC)

A federal per-$kWh$ tax credit for the generation and sale of electricity from qualifying renewable-energy sources.

Renewable Energy Credit (REC)

A tradable certificate representing the legal property rights to the renewability of one $MWh$ of renewable electricity generation.

Micro-siting

The practice of using anemometers and software to optimize the specific layout of wind turbines on a project site to maximize production.

Turbine-wake Interference

The reduction of energy productivity and increased wear on downwind turbines caused by turbulent wind flow from upwind turbines.

Incidental-take Permit

A permit issued by the US Fish & Wildlife Service to avoid penalties for the killing or harming of protected species that is incidental to an otherwise lawful activity.

Flicker Effects

The strobe-like shadows cast by sunlight passing through rotating wind turbines.

Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC)

A federal subsidy for solar-energy development calculated as a percentage of the taxpayer's total investment in a qualifying project.

Utility-death-spiral Narrative

The argument that net-metering reduces grid-supplied electricity sales, forcing utilities to raise rates, which further incentivizes customers to adopt solar.

Value-of-solar Tariffs (VOSTs)

Programs where utility regulators estimate the monetary value of excess solar electricity fed onto the grid and credit customers based on that valuation.

Demand Charge

An electricity charge calculated based on a customer's peak electricity consumption during a single brief period over the billing cycle.

Ancient Lights

An English common-law doctrine that protected landowners from neighbor shading if they enjoyed direct sunlight for $20$ uninterrupted years.

Heliostats

Special mirrors used in concentrating solar-power ($CSP$) plants to concentrate sunlight onto a specific location.

Energy Efficiency

Modifying the design of a device or facility so it requires less energy to operate.

Energy Conservation

Motivating individuals to modify their behaviors to reduce energy consumption.

Energy-Efficiency-Resource Standards (EERS)

State requirements for utilities to achieve target reductions in total electricity sales through efficiency and conservation programs.

Smart Meters

Electricity meters that gather and transmit real-time data regarding a customer's usage throughout a billing period.

Advanced Biofuel

Ethanol not derived from corn that has $50$ percent or less lifecycle $GHG$ emissions than the fuel it replaces.