Interest in PBR and Altreg Continues in 2024

Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City

Performance-based regulation (“PBR”) and other alternatives to traditional ratemaking (collectively called “Altreg”) were hot topics at courses and conferences about energy utility regulation in 2023. Mark Newton Lowry, President of PEG, gave a talk on Altreg at the spring conference of the NARUC Staff Subcommittee on Accounting and Finance in Oklahoma City. He taught the Altreg segment and Regulatory Strategy workshop at the Edison Electric Institute (“EEI”) Electric Rates Course July 23-26 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In August he taught a session on Altreg at the Fundamentals Course of the Michigan State University Institute of Public Utilities. In September, Dr. Lowry gave a talk on Incentivizing Capital Efficiency to NARUC’s PBR State Working Group. In October he conducted a 3-day seminar on PBR for NARUC’s Regulatory Training Initiative and taught the PBR segment at the Energy Utilities Basic Course of the Wisconsin Public Utilities Institute in Madison. On behalf of the Edison Electric Institute, Dr. Lowry organized and moderated a panel on Alternative Regulation for Emerging Electric Industry Challenges at the NARUC Annual Meeting in La Quinta, CA. Also in La Quinta, he participated in a panel on rate design at the Critical Consumer Issues Forum. In December, he gave a talk on “Why Performance-Based Rates Make Sense” at EUCI’s Advanced Rate Design conference in Denver.

On March 5, 2024, he gave a lecture on PBR at an Energy Law course of the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto. Dr. Lowry will discuss Canadian PBR at the SURFA conference April 11-12 in Richmond VA. He will give a lecture on Altreg at the Michigan State University IPU Fundamentals Course in August.