DOE Sends CEI Rulemaking to OMB for Approval

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that DOE had submitted a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on Critical Electric Infrastructure (CIE) for approval. This rulemaking was not published in the Spring 2018 Unified Agenda, so it is not clear what the rule would specifically address.

An article (registration required) in E&E News yesterday, however, states:

“The Department of Energy will soon publish proposed regulations outlining how it plans to ‘receive, hold and share’ critical electricity infrastructure information from utilities, a senior DOE official [Catherine Jereza, DOE's deputy assistant secretary for transmission planning and technical assistance] said yesterday.”

Most of what Jereza describes is covered under 18 CFR 388.113. Interestingly that Critical Electric Infrastructure Information (CEII) regulation only covers information disclosed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). It does not specifically include similar (or even identical) information disclosed directly to DOE.