The Accelerated Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act (“Accelerator Act”) was enacted to speed up the siting and construction of major renewable energy projects in New York State. One of the key components of the Accelerator Act was the creation of the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) within the New York State Department of State to address, in large part, many of the shortcomings of New York State’s existing Article 10 siting process. At the statutory level, ORES is intended to improve and streamline the process for cost-effective siting of large-scale renewable energy in a timely fashion in order to achieve the State’s aggressive renewable energy targets. Of course, the details would be fleshed out in regulations required to be promulgated within a year of the Act’s passage.
Continue Reading New York State’s Office of Renewable Energy Siting Draft Regulations Out for Public Comment

The New York Public Service Commission (“PSC”) appears to be creating a new Office of Investigations and Enforcement (“OIE”) and has posted a job listing for a Director of OIE (“Director”) who would report to the CEO of the Department of Public Service (“DPS”), as well as the Chairman of the PSC. The Director would be tasked with managing the OIE’s efforts in investigating and enforcing the regulations promulgated pursuant to §25 and §25-a of the Public Service Law. This mandate may include a vast field of public utilities and comes at a time when New York is in the midst of updating its complex Value of Distributed Energy Resources mechanism, which regulates electric utilities in their dealings with the ever-increasing number of privately owned distributed energy resources.
Continue Reading New York Public Service Commission to Create “Office of Investigations and Enforcement” to Centralize Compliance Regime

Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed 2019 budget originally proposed the elimination of an important sales tax exemption that allows certain customers of Energy Service Companies (“ESCOs”) to receive electric and gas supply without paying transmission and distribution sales tax. Currently, nonresidential default utility customers pay sales tax on both commodity and delivery, while nonresidential ESCO customers

New York Public Service Commission Creates Opportunity for Relief from Expensive “Zero Emissions Compliance” Payments in Cases of Substantial Hardship

New York’s Clean Energy Standard (“CES”) requires, among other things, each Load Serving Entity (“LSE”) to purchase Zero Emission Credits (“ZECs”) from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (“NYSERDA”) in proportion to the statewide load served by such LSE in a given compliance year. The ZEC payments, in turn, subsidize the continued operation of nuclear baseload power to assist New York in meeting its ambitious clean energy and environmental goals.
Continue Reading Need a Break from Excessive Zero Emissions Compliance Payment Obligations? You Have Options.

On February 22, 2018, the New York Public Service Commission (“PSC”) issued an order (“Expansion Order”) expanding the size cap on projects eligible to receive compensation under the State’s Value of Distributed Energy Resources (“VDER”) tariff from 2MW to 5MW. The VDER tariff is designed to compensate Distributed Energy Resources (“DERs”) based on their actual value to the electric grid, such as proximity to load and ability to create certain system efficiencies. Prior to the Expansion Order, eligible projects were limited to a 2MW size cap, which created artificial inefficiencies.
Continue Reading New York Expands Size Cap to 5MW for Eligible Distributed Energy Resources