Court affirms utilities' cost recovery program (FL-SC)

[FBaggins]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously upheld a state law that allows utilities to charge customers for future nuclear reactors — even if they never get built. The court ruling came on the same day that the Florida Legislature passed a bill intended to decrease how much utilities could charge for nuclear power. The measure now heads to Gov. Rick Scott. Representatives from both Florida Power & Light Company and Duke Energy hailed the high court ruling and criticized the decision by state legislators to push ahead with the bill.

...snip...

The court battle came about after Southern Alliance for Clean Energy had appealed a final order of the Public Service Commission that allowed both FPL and Progress Energy Florida to charge customers for nuclear power plants that may never be built. The alliance, an environmental advocacy group, asked the justices to declare the law an unconstitutional delegation of authority from the Legislature to the commission, which regulates the state's utilities. The court ruled that the law wasn't unconstitutional and the commission's order wasn't arbitrary or unsupported by evidence.

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-05-02/court-affirms-utilities-cost-recovery-program

[djean111]

1. Of course the Florida Supreme Court upheld that law.

Tallahassee is so bought and paid for and corrupt that it has probably destroyed the ozone layer right above it.
Duke Power bought progress Energy and is likely gleefully totting up imaginary nuclear plants it can charge Florida customers for at this very moment. What a bargain for Duke!!!! Increase profits without doing anything but holding little planning meetings.

[FBaggins]

2. The fact that it was a frivolous lawsuit probably made it easier.

It's one thing to argue that the rule is bad policy. You can convince the legislature to change the rule (or vote in people who will). It's quite another to claim that the law is an unconstitutional delegation of the legislature's authority to the public service board.

If that were true, there would be lots of states with constitutional problems going well beyond nuclear power.

Their other argument is pretty circular. They want to claim that going through the NRC's permitting process does not constitute an "intent to build" because the utility hasn't made a final commitment/decision to build. The problem is that they can't make such a determination without first going throught the process.

and is likely gleefully totting up imaginary nuclear plants it can charge Florida customers for at this very moment

It appears that the law is changing at least enough to avoid that.

[Yo_Mama]

3. Don't utililities always rack up planning costs?

I can't see a legal doctrine that would say a utility wouldn't have the right to recover costs even if a project weren't built.

Any sort of project process involves costs, and the projects wont' always go through. For instance, environmental impact studies, etc, are done for many types of projects. Doing these studies means that sometimes you will come up with projects which won't be built.

Or changes. For instance, if you are building a transmission line.

This doesn't seem workable for regulated utilities. They should have enough oversight so they aren't wasting the money, but studies and permitting processes are often very expensive for any type of project.