Assessing potential future environmental legislative, regulatory, and judicial events

This report describes a methodology to proactively and methodically assess future potential environmental legislative, regulatory, and judicial events. This is an important endeavor because new, revised, and reauthorized legislation, proposed and final regulations, and outcomes of judicial proceedings have the potential to impose new actions, directions, and costs of many organizations in the United States (related to capital investments, operating approaches, and research and development) and to affect the quality of life. The electric power industry is particularly impacted by environmental regulatory events (the term `regulatory` is used to cover all the types of legal events listed above), as the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity affects air and water quality, require disposal of solid, hazardous, and radioactive wastes, and at times, impacts wetlands and endangered species. Numerous potential regulatory events, such as the reauthorization of the Clean Water Act and new regulations associated with global climate change, can greatly affect the power industry. Organizations poised to respond proactively to such events will improve their competitive positions, reduce their costs in the long-term, and improve their public images.