New residential and commercial developments often create costs in the form of congestion and burdens on municipal infrastructure. Citizens typically pay for infrastructure expansion associated with growth through their property taxes, but local governments sometimes use cost-shifting tools to force developers to pay for—or provide—new infrastructure themselves. These tools are forms of “exactions”—demands levied on developers to force them to pay for the burdens new projects impose.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is a little-known and too-often ignored federal authority with the power to block or rapidly accelerate the transition to a clean energy future, and is thus indispensable to addressing climate change. Institute for Policy Integrity scholars Bethany A. Davis Noll and Burcin Unel are to be applauded for bringing into focus a regulatory space that is essential to efforts to decarbonize the power sector.

Electricity generation in the United States is one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which cause severe climate change-related harms. Despite the severity of those harms, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which regulates the interstate transmission and wholesale electricity markets, has avoided addressing the issue. FERC has historically shied away from environmental considerations in ratemaking.