Scotuscast

On January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court decided several energy cases consolidated under the heading Federal Energy Regulatory Commission v. Electric Power Supply Association. These cases concern a practice called “demand re­sponse,” in which operators of wholesale markets pay electricity consumers for commitments not to use power at certain times. In the regulation challenged here, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) required those market operators, in specified circumstances, to compensate the two services equivalently—that is, to pay the same price to demand response providers for conserving energy as to generators for making more of it. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated this regulation, however, holding it beyond the FERC’s authority under the Federal Power Act as well as arbitrary and capricious, for failure to justify adequately a potential windfall to demand response providers. -- The Supreme Court granted certiorari on two questions: (1) Does the Federal Power Act perm