The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA)
charged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with developing
a national broadband plan (the Plan) to ensure that all people of
the United States have access to broadband capability. The ARRA
specifically required the Plan to consider broadband's role in
advancing energy independence and efficiency. The FCC submitted its
Plan to Congress on March 17, 2010. The Plan's recommendations
for advancing energy efficiency focus on the role of Broadband in
supporting a nationwide Smart Grid that enables customers to make
more efficient choices about energy supply and better management of
the grid. Two of the recommendations are directed at state
regulation of energy supply.
First, the FCC recommends state public utility commissions (PUCs)
"ensure that utilities' incentives do not lead them to
make suboptimal communications and technology decisions."
Plan, 270. This recommendation is premised on the FCC's concern
that while commercial networks may be capable of supporting
mission-critical applications for Smart Grids, "many large
utilities have economic disincentives to use commercial networks
and may be making suboptimal choices." Plan, 270. The economic
disincentive, according to the FCC, is the "guaranteed profits
on the assets" regulated utilities employ. The FCC recommends
PUCs "consider letting recurring network operating costs
qualify for rate of return similar to capitalized utility-built
networks" consistent with the ARRA. Plan, 270; See 16 U.S.C.
§ 2621(d)(18)(B).
Second, the FCC recommends that PUCs "require electric
utilities to provide consumers access to, and control of, their own
digital energy information, including real-time information from
smart meters and historical consumption, price and bill data over
the Internet." Plan, 274. PUCs are "strongly"
encouraged to require the information and to include
"customers' generation mix and emissions data in as close
to real time as possible." Plan, 274. The FCC believes this
data will encourage customers to make wiser choices about the
electricity they consume and cautions that "[s]tates and
utilities should not wait for full smart meter deployments to take
these steps." Plan, 274. The Plan theorizes that the data
could be made available to home purchasers so energy consumption
can be factored into their decision making process and to the
federal government to evaluate its energy efficiency
initiatives.
The FCC believes the information should be available in a
non-discriminatory fashion to the consumer and its authorized third
party and should be provided in standardized, machine-readable
formats. The FCC recommends that Congress consider national
legislation to cover consumer privacy and the accessibility of
energy data if states fail to develop reasonable policies over the
next 18 months. Plan, 274. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) is also encouraged to adopt accessibility standards as a
model for the states.
The Plan's recommendations do not have the force of law and are
not mandates to PUCs to consider these issues. The efforts PUCs
will take, if any, to investigate the FCC's recommendations are
not clear at this time.
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