Political Cross Currents in the Electricity Sector

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission faces increasing and conflicting pressures from both States and the Department of Energy to intervene in the federal wholesale electricity markets that FERC administers. In this primer, Guarini Center fellow Peter S. Ross provides a brief overview of those political forces and the legal framework in which they operate. The paper ultimately concludes that these cross currents, some of which are quite recent, have the potential to fundamentally alter the federal electricity markets, or even precipitate their collapse.