Browse regulations

The regulation establishes the scope and procedures for review and approval of projects under the Susquehanna River Basin Compact, including consumptive use of water, withdrawals, and diversions.

The regulatory compliance costs exceed $2 trillion per year and the Code of Federal Regulations has ballooned to over 185,000 pages, creating a labyrinth that no citizen, business, or even regulator can fully comprehend. Additionally, regulatory capture is endemic and small businesses bear a disproportionate burden.

Requires centralized service companies in holding company systems to file annual financial reports (FERC Form 60) electronically with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by May 1 each year.

Provides essential transparency into holding company financial transactions, preventing cross-subsidization and cost-shifting that would ultimately be borne by utility ratepayers. Without this standardized annual reporting, FERC would be unable to effectively monitor for fraudulent transfers or improper cost allocations that inflate consumer prices. The electronic filing requirement minimizes compliance burden while ensuring regulators have timely data to protect the public interest in fair energy pricing.

Federal regulation requiring utility holding companies and service companies to preserve detailed financial and operational records for extended periods, with specific retention schedules and destruction procedures.

This regulation imposes massive compliance costs on energy companies without clear public benefit, creating a bureaucratic burden that stifles innovation and competition in the utility sector. The detailed record-keeping requirements serve as a tool for regulatory micromanagement rather than genuine consumer protection, while the costs are ultimately passed to ratepayers. States and private auditors can handle record-keeping needs more efficiently than federal mandates.

This regulation prescribes a detailed Uniform System of Accounts for centralized service companies within utility holding company systems, mandating specific accounting classifications, methods, and recordkeeping. It defines hundreds of accounting terms and requires accrual accounting, cost allocation systems, and specific treatment for leases, debt, taxes, and transactions with associate companies. The system applies to any service company providing administrative, managerial, or other services to regulated utilities under FERC jurisdiction, with exemptions for certain specialized entities.

This regulation embodies bureaucratic overreach into minute accounting details that should be determined by state accounting boards or market mechanisms. It imposes substantial compliance costs that disproportionately burden small service companies and create barriers to entry. The inflexible prescribed accounts distort business decisions, forcing companies to prioritize regulatory compliance over economic efficiency. The unseen costs include reduced innovation, higher costs passed to utility customers, and the philosophical harm of accepting that federal bureaucrats can dictate private-sector bookkeeping. Any transparency benefits can be achieved through existing GAAP standards and state-level regulation of utilities.

This regulation imposes book-access, reporting, and notification requirements on holding companies and their affiliates that own electric or gas utilities. It aims to prevent cross-subsidization from regulated utilities to unregulated affiliates and ensure transparency for FERC's protection of jurisdictional ratepayers. It defines key terms, mandates maintenance of records, requires status filings (FERC-65/65A/65B), provides exemptions/waivers, and includes e-Tag data access provisions.

The regulation imposes substantial compliance costs and regulatory burden through open-ended record-keeping and broad discretionary powers for FERC to determine relevance. It chills efficient corporate structuring and investment by creating uncertainty. Existing federal statutes already empower FERC to prevent cross-subsidization through targeted enforcement; this prophylactic, blanket oversight is an unnecessary federal intrusion into private corporate governance that outweighs any marginal benefit to ratepayers.

This regulation prescribes procedures for Interstate Commerce Commission audits, including issuance of deficiency notices, 15-day response periods, and appeal options via shortened procedure or trial-type hearing.

This regulation imposes substantial hidden compliance costs on transportation entities, with particularly crushing burdens on small operators. It entrenches unconstitutional federal control over intrastate commerce, violating Tenth Amendment federalism. The procedural complexity creates barriers to entry, protects incumbent monopolies through regulatory capture, and distorts free market incentives. The unseen cost is the systematic erosion of liberty and rule of law through centralized economic planning.

These regulations establish procedural mechanisms for challenging Natural Gas Policy Act (NGPA) regulations and audit findings, including stay applications, rehearing petitions, and administrative review processes for audit deficiencies.

These procedural rules create unnecessary bureaucratic complexity for natural gas industry participants. The multi-layered review processes, shortened procedures, and hearing requirements add compliance costs and regulatory uncertainty without clear consumer benefits. Private contract disputes and market-based solutions would be more efficient than these administrative procedures.

This regulation establishes procedures for permitting electric transmission facilities in national interest corridors, including pre-filing requirements, stakeholder engagement, environmental reviews, and eminent domain provisions. It creates a comprehensive framework for federal approval of interstate transmission projects while coordinating with state, tribal, and local entities.

This regulation creates an unnecessary federal overlay on what should be state and local jurisdiction over transmission siting. It imposes massive compliance costs on energy projects, creates bureaucratic delays, and centralizes power in federal agencies rather than allowing market-based solutions and state-level decision making. The extensive stakeholder requirements and environmental review processes add years to project timelines without proportional benefits, effectively blocking needed infrastructure development.

This regulation requires transmission organizations with organized electricity markets to provide long-term firm transmission rights that hedge against congestion costs, with specific guidelines on allocation, term length, and priority for load serving entities. It establishes rules for how these rights should be designed, funded, and administered to support long-term power supply arrangements.

Americans would be worse off if this regulation was deleted because it ensures stable, long-term access to transmission capacity for electricity providers, preventing market manipulation and ensuring reliable power supply planning. Without these rights, transmission organizations could create artificial scarcity, charge excessive congestion fees, and destabilize the grid by making it difficult for utilities to secure predictable transmission capacity for serving their customers.

This regulation establishes mandatory reliability standards for the U.S. bulk power system, including cybersecurity requirements. It creates a framework for certification of an Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) to develop and enforce these standards, establishes regional entities for enforcement, and includes detailed processes for standard development, compliance auditing, and penalties. The regulation covers definitions, ERO certification criteria, funding mechanisms, standard approval processes, conflict resolution with existing FERC orders, compliance monitoring, penalty structures, delegation of enforcement authority to regional entities, and Commission oversight powers.

Deleting this regulation would eliminate essential coordination mechanisms for North American electrical grid reliability, risking cascading blackouts that could devastate the economy and public safety. The interstate nature of electricity transmission makes voluntary coordination practically impossible - the classic collective action problem. While compliance costs are significant, the regulation directly prevents catastrophic systemic risks that would impose far greater economic losses. The alternative isn't free markets but rather grid instability and rolling blackouts.

This regulation mandates that public utilities engaged in interstate electricity transmission and wholesale sales comply with North American Energy Standards Board (NAESB) Wholesale Electric Quadrant standards for electronic business practices and communication protocols. It also governs the sharing and protection of non-public operational information to ensure grid reliability and prevent market abuse.

Deleting this rule would fragment the interstate electricity market, raise transaction costs, and threaten grid reliability; the networked nature of transmission and the need for universal technical coherence cannot be achieved through private contracts alone, while the information protections deter manipulation and safeguard critical infrastructure.

Prohibits fraudulent, deceptive, or misleading practices in natural gas and electric energy markets, including false statements, omissions, and schemes to defraud entities engaged in energy transactions. Applies to entities subject to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission jurisdiction and explicitly excludes private right of action.

Redundant with existing securities fraud laws, common law fraud, and state criminal statutes. Adds compliance costs without providing unique protections, while enabling regulatory capture and expanding FERC jurisdiction beyond necessary bounds.

Establishes flammability requirements for mattress sets to reduce deaths and injuries from mattress fires by limiting fire size during a 30-minute test using oxygen consumption calorimetry.

Federal regulation of mattress flammability represents overreach into consumer safety standards that should be determined by market forces and state/local authorities. The $2 trillion annual compliance costs burden disproportionately affects small businesses, while the 185,000-page CFR creates an unknowable legal labyrinth that violates rule of law principles.

This regulation (16 CFR Part 1031) governs CPSC participation in voluntary standards development. It implements statutory requirements that the CPSC must rely on voluntary standards when they adequately reduce risk and will be substantially complied with. The regulation establishes criteria for agency involvement, defines levels of employee participation (membership, involvement, observation), sets conflict-of-interest restrictions, requires transparency through public web listings, and creates a Voluntary Standards Coordinator to manage the program. It encourages performance-oriented standards and requires consideration of anticompetitive effects.

This regulation implements congressional mandate to favor voluntary standards over mandatory ones, limiting regulatory overreach. Deleting it would remove transparency requirements, anticompetitive safeguards, and incentives for industry self-regulation, likely leading to more burdensome mandatory standards that stifle innovation and increase compliance costs. The regulation itself restrains government power rather than expanding it.

Independent federal agency protecting public from unreasonable risks of injury from consumer products through safety standards, recalls, and research. Administers five product safety acts including flammable fabrics, hazardous substances, and poison prevention packaging.

Federal regulatory compliance costs exceed $2 trillion annually - a hidden tax on every American household exceeding $14,000. The CPSC's broad authority over consumer products creates unnecessary barriers to entry, protects established players from competition, and distorts market incentives. Small businesses bear disproportionate compliance costs while consumers ultimately pay through higher prices. Product safety can be achieved through private certification, insurance markets, and state-level regulation without federal overreach.