Opinion ID: 187165
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: CoGen's Petition Is Untimely

Text: Under 16 U.S.C. § 825 l (b): [A] party ... aggrieved by an order issued by the Commission ... may obtain a review of such order in the United States Court of Appeals ... by filing in such court, within sixty days after the order of the Commission upon the application for rehearing, a written petition preying that the order of the Commission be modified or set aside. This provision establishes a jurisdictional time bar on petitions for review of FERC orders. See City of Batavia v. FERC, 672 F.2d 64, 72-73 (D.C.Cir.1982). Therefore, because [s]tatutory jurisdictional requirements... are not mere technicalities that can be brushed aside by a court, Williston Basin Interstate Pipeline Co. v. FERC, 475 F.3d 330, 336 (D.C.Cir.2006), we must parse the record with care to determine whether CoGen's petition for review is timely. The Commission's orders became ripe for judicial review with Opinion No. 463-C, which denied all of the parties' requests for rehearing of Opinion 463-B in their entirety. The Existing Customers sought review of Opinion No. 463-B and Opinion No. 463-C after the denial of the request for rehearing. CoGen, however, filed a request for rehearing of Opinion 463-C before the Commission, a request that was denied in a summary decision, and now seeks review of the later order. CoGen argues that Opinion No. 463-C did not simply deny rehearing.... Instead, Opinion 463-C set forth a [new] standard for exemption from the [Control Area Services] charge. Reply Br. of Cogeneration Association at 4. CoGen finds this new standard in a paragraph in Opinion No. 463-C in which the Commission defends the modeling standard for the exemption to the gross load allocation against criticism that it violates cost causation principles: The Commission previously noted that based on cost-causation principles, certain customers should be exempted from the allocation of [Control Area Services] costs, and upon further investigation the Commission refined that exception to better match the specifics of cost-causation in this proceeding. The [California] ISO incurs administrative costs in conducting such activities as transmission planning studies and transmission operation studies. Accordingly, we disagree with [the] assertion that there is no cause and effect relationship between modeled generation and [California] ISO's administrative expenses. Additionally, [Participating Transmission Operators] historically have been the source of the transmission and generation data required to conduct such studies and analyses. To the extent that generators are included in [Participating Transmission Operator] studies and/or models and the ISO subsequently receives the information, the ISO will decide whether that information is relevant and useful in conducting its various studies and in modeling the transmission system. If the ISO decides that the information regarding behind-the-meter generators is relevant to its studies and system modeling, then those generators are ineligible for the exemption because they are significant for study and modeling purposes and thus ultimately relate to administrative costs incurred by the ISO. We therefore will deny rehearing requests of [CoGen] and SMUD on this issue. 116 F.E.R.C. at 61,917 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). However, this paragraph simply does not do the work that CoGen wants it to do. Nothing in Opinion No. 463-C changes the standard given in Opinion No. 463-B. Opinion No. 463-C simply offers further justification for why the standard is appropriate and consistent with FERC's cost-causation principles. The standard, that generators that are not modeled by the ISO i.e., generators on which the Participating Transmission Operators are not required to provide data to the ISOare exempt from the gross load allocation, remained the same. It was the same before and after Opinion No. 463-C. In the language at issue, the Commission simply reiterated its argumentwhich it had offered many times beforethat modeling was an appropriate proxy for costs incurred. That the Commission used slightly different words to do so does not make Opinion No. 463-C a separate order requiring a request for rehearing. In order for petitioners to preserve their rights to judicial review under 16 U.S.C. § 825 l (b), they must file a request for rehearing of a challenged order with FERC unless there is reasonable ground for failure so to do. Allegheny Power v. FERC, 437 F.3d 1215, 1220 (D.C.Cir.2006) (quoting statute). We clarified the circumstances under which a complainant need not request rehearing: [W]e conclude that [the Federal Power Act] does require an application for rehearing of an order on rehearing when the later order modifies the results of the earlier one in a significant way, raising objections to the rehearing order that are substantially different from those raised against the original one. Town of Norwood, Mass. v. FERC, 906 F.2d 772, 775 (D.C.Cir.1990). In Allegheny Power, we further clarified that the Act requires a second petition only when the result is different; a petitioner need not file a second petition `when the outcome had not been changed but the Commission had supplied a new improved rationale.' 437 F.3d at 1222 (quoting Cal. Dep't of Water Res. v. FERC, 306 F.3d 1121, 1126 (D.C.Cir.2002)) (brackets omitted). These cases describe the conditions under which a request for rehearing is necessary to preserve challenges on objections to a Commission order, but they also indicate when a challenge is ripe for judicial review. When a petition for rehearing is not necessary i.e., when a rehearing has been denied in its entirety with no substantive modification in the orderthe case is ripe for judicial review and the clock on the jurisdictional time-bar starts ticking. Cf. Williston Basin, 475 F.3d at 335 (holding that, under the Natural Gas Act, court had no jurisdiction over petition filed more than 60 days after the FERC order of which [petitioner] now seeks review where request for rehearing was not timely filed). CoGen was required to file a petition for review within 60 days of FERC's issuance of Opinion No. 463-C. It is quite clear that Opinion No. 463-C provided an adequate basis for a petition for judicial review. Because Opinion No. 463-C was simply a denial of rehearing and did not, as the CoGen argues, create a new standard for the exemption to the gross load allocation of the Control Area Services charge, CoGen's petition for review is time barred. Accordingly, we have no jurisdiction over the challenges raised by CoGen.