Advanced Introduction to Law and Renewable Energy

If you work in energy, sit on a planning board, own a solar-ready roof, or just want to argue intelligently about your electric bill, this is the map. Eisen translates rate cases, net metering fights, and federal-state turf wars into plain English. You finish able to spot who wins and who loses in the transition to clean power, and why the law, not technology, is often the bottleneck.

1. 1early chapters on electricity regulation history

   The regulatory compact: a century-old deal now being renegotiated

   Picture a courtroom where the future of your electric bill is being argued, and the lawyers keep invoking a bargain struck generations ago. Eisen opens with the deal at the heart of American electricity: utilities accepted an obligation to serve everyone within their territory, and in exchange states granted them monopoly service territories and cost-based rates. For decades that trade - service for exclusivity - defined the industry. Now rooftop solar, storage, and competition are straining it, and courts and commissions are deciding what the promise still means.

   The idea

   The compact was never a single signed contract; it is a framework of statutes, cases, and commission practice that courts have described as a bargain. That flexibility cuts both ways: it let regulators protect customers for a century, and it now lets them rewrite the rules as technology shifts. What surprises newcomers is how much of modern solar policy turns on this old idea - whether a utility can claim a 'right' to serve customers who generate their own power. Eisen shows the answer depends on which era's cases you cite.

   Try this: Pull up your state utility commission's docket for your electric utility and read the first ten pages of its most recent rate case.

2. 2chapters on net metering and distributed generation

   Net metering: the fight over what a kilowatt-hour is worth

   A homeowner in a sunny state installs panels, watches the meter spin backward, and assumes the savings are settled law. Then the utility files to change the deal, and the state commission becomes a battleground. Eisen explains net metering as the policy that credits customer-generators for power they export, typically at the retail rate, and shows how states have adopted, capped, and revised it. The stakes are concrete: how fast solar pays for itself, and who subsidizes whom. The outcome varies by state, and the rules keep moving.

   The idea

   Net metering looks like a simple accounting rule, but it encodes a judgment about the value of distributed solar - avoided energy, avoided wires, avoided pollution. Because the law lets each state define that value, two neighbors under different commissions can face wildly different paybacks for identical systems. Eisen's point is procedural as much as substantive: the fight happens in rate cases and legislative sessions, not in the lab. Watch the docket, not the weather.

   Try this: Before quoting a solar payback figure, check your state's current net metering rules and any pending commission review.

3. 3chapters on jurisdiction and the Federal Power Act

   Federal-state turf: the FERC-ERISA-style split over the wires

   Imagine a lawyer drawing a line down the middle of a power line: wholesale on one side, retail on the other. Eisen walks through the Federal Power Act's division of labor - FERC oversees wholesale sales and transmission, states set retail rates and distribution. The line was drawn for a world of big central stations, and it now has to accommodate rooftop solar selling back through the same meter. Cases test where distributed energy ends and the market begins, and the answer decides which regulator - and which set of rules - controls.

   The idea

   Jurisdiction is destiny in energy law. Whether a transaction is 'wholesale' or 'retail' determines the forum, the standard of review, and often the outcome, so parties fight hard over labels that sound technical. The surprise is how much innovation policy turns on this old statutory boundary: storage, aggregation, and virtual net metering all strain it. Eisen's advice, in effect, is to read the jurisdictional argument first - it usually predicts the result.

   Try this: When you read about an energy dispute, ask first whether the fight is over wholesale or retail jurisdiction - it explains most of the rest.

4. 4chapters on PURPA and independent power

   PURPA: the forgotten federal law that still opens doors

   Go back to the late 1970s, when oil shocks made Congress look for alternatives to utility monopolies. The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act required utilities to buy power from qualifying facilities - small renewables and cogeneration - at rates reflecting the utilities' avoided costs. Eisen shows how this unglamorous mandate created the independent power industry: developers who owned generation but did not sell to retail customers. Decades later, its purchase obligations and avoided-cost rules still give small renewable projects a legal foothold against reluctant utilities.

   The idea

   PURPA matters because it decoupled ownership of generation from the monopoly model - a structural change dressed as a purchase mandate. Its 'avoided cost' standard forced a question that still haunts rate design: what is it worth to not build the next plant? States implement PURPA differently, so the same federal statute produces different economics in different places. When a small project gets a contract today, PURPA's machinery is often quietly underneath.

   Try this: Look up whether your state's utilities have a published PURPA avoided-cost rate schedule and note the rate for solar-qualifying facilities.

5. 5chapters on community choice and local power

   Community choice aggregation: cities buying power on residents' behalf

   A city council votes to become the electricity buyer for its residents, and suddenly the local government - not the investor-owned utility - chooses the power mix. Eisen describes community choice aggregation, the state-authorized structure that lets cities and counties pool load and procure generation, often with more renewables, while the incumbent utility still delivers over its wires. Residents can usually opt out. The result is a new actor at the table: local governments with procurement power and climate goals, negotiating with the old monopolies.

   The idea

   Community choice changes who decides, not who delivers - the utility keeps the wires, the aggregator buys the electrons. That split creates both opportunity and friction: local control over supply, but dependence on utility infrastructure and on the state statutes that enable the model. Eisen's deeper point is that the law creates markets by creating actors; authorize a new buyer, and the politics of decarbonization shift. Check whether your state even allows it - that single statute decides.

   Try this: Search whether your state has a community choice aggregation statute and whether any city near you has launched one.

6. 6chapters on ratemaking and cost allocation

   Ratemaking: how a number on your bill gets made

   Sit in a rate case and watch the abstractions become money. Eisen walks through the machinery: a utility files for rates, interveners contest the revenue requirement, and the commission sets rates on a cost-of-service basis - prudently incurred costs plus a return on capital, spread across customer classes. Every allocation choice - who pays for the wires, the peak, the fuel - shifts dollars between homeowners, renters, and factories. The hearing is where the transition's costs get assigned, and the outcome lands on every bill.

   The idea

   Ratemaking is where energy policy becomes arithmetic. Because cost-of-service regulation allocates shared costs, the fight is rarely over whether to pay but over who pays - and the answer depends on classification and allocation choices that sound like accounting. Distributed solar, storage, and electric vehicles all enter through this door, each arguing it lowers costs it should be credited for. Eisen's craft lesson: the rate design schedule at the back of a decision tells you who really won.

   Try this: Find the rate design table in your utility's latest approved rate case and see how residential versus commercial rates changed.

7. 7chapters on energy storage

   Storage changes the physics - and the law scrambles to follow

   A battery does something no traditional asset did: it can be a generator at 6 p.m. and a load at noon, and it can sit behind a customer's meter or on the grid side. Eisen shows how storage breaks the legal categories built for one-way power - generation, transmission, distribution, retail - because a single device plays several roles at once. Regulators must decide how to classify it, who may own it, and how it gets paid. The rules are being written now, in orders and statutes that will outlast the hardware.

   The idea

   Storage is the stress test for electricity law's categories. When one asset is simultaneously supply, demand, and transmission service, cost allocation and jurisdiction rules written for distinct functions start producing arbitrary answers. Eisen's point is that the law lags the physics: the technology works before the definitions do. That is why the most important storage documents are not spec sheets but commission decisions about ownership and compensation.

   Try this: Check whether your state or regional market has adopted rules letting storage earn revenue in multiple roles, and note what is still missing.

8. 8later chapters on utility business models

   The utility of the future: wires company, platform, or something else

   Envision a hearing room where a utility's future is on trial: if customers generate, store, and shift their own power, what exactly is the utility for? Eisen surveys the proposals - utilities as wires-and-backup providers, as platform operators coordinating distributed resources, as owners of new assets - and the regulatory responses that try to align profits with public goals. The stakes are the utility's revenue stream and the customer's freedom. The outcome is unsettled, and every state is running a different experiment.

   The idea

   The business-model question is really a compensation question: how do you pay a company whose traditional job - selling kilowatt-hours - is being eroded by its customers? Options like decoupling, performance incentives, and new rate structures each embed a theory of what the utility should be rewarded for. Eisen's caution is that the law moves by precedent, so today's pilot programs are tomorrow's default rules. The experiment is the policy.

   Try this: Look up whether your state has adopted revenue decoupling for its electric utilities and when.

9. 9chapters on siting and permitting

   Siting and permitting: where projects go to live or die

   A developer picks a windy ridge or a sunny field, secures a power purchase agreement, and then discovers the hardest part: getting permission to build. Eisen walks through the permitting gauntlet - local zoning, state siting boards, environmental review, transmission interconnection - each a place where a project can stall or die. Neighbors, conservation groups, and utilities all have standing to object. The outcome is decided less by engineering than by process: who has a veto, and how long the review takes.

   The idea

   Siting is where the renewable transition meets democracy at close range. The law distributes veto points deliberately - to protect local interests and the environment - but the aggregate effect is delay that can kill otherwise viable projects. Eisen's insight is that speed is a legal variable: streamlining statutes, preemption of local rules, and standardized interconnection are all attempts to change the timeline. If you care about build-out, study the procedure, not just the resource maps.

   Try this: Check your county or town's zoning code for how it treats utility-scale solar or wind - one line of text can decide a project.

10. 10chapters on interconnection standards

    Interconnection: the queue between you and the grid

    A solar project has a site, financing, and a buyer - then it joins the interconnection queue and waits. Eisen explains the rules that govern how distributed and utility-scale projects physically connect to the grid: technical standards, studies of grid impact, deadlines, and fees. Utilities control the process, and applicants bear much of the cost and risk of grid upgrades. Backlogs and delays are common, and the terms of the interconnection agreement can matter as much as the power price.

    The idea

    Interconnection is the legal-technical chokepoint of the transition. Because the grid was engineered for one-way flow from big plants, adding many small sources requires studies, upgrades, and rules that were not designed for volume. Eisen's point is that the queue is a policy artifact: deadlines, cost allocation, and screening rules are choices, and states and FERC keep revising them. A project's fate often turns on paperwork and timing, not sunlight.

    Try this: Look up your utility or regional grid operator's interconnection queue statistics and see how long projects currently wait.

11. 11concluding synthesis chapters

    Reading the transition: law as the rate-limiting step

    Step back and watch the pattern across the whole book: a technology arrives, the old legal categories strain, and the decisive battles happen in statutes, rate cases, and commission orders. Eisen's synthesis is that the transition to renewable energy is as much a legal restructuring as an engineering one - monopoly compacts, jurisdictional lines, ratemaking arithmetic, and permitting processes all have to be rewritten. The pace of change is set less by the cost of panels than by the speed of rulemaking. The book ends with the reader equipped to watch that rulemaking in real time.

    The idea

    The surprise is how much of the clean energy future is already decided in documents most people never read: tariffs, orders, and statutes. Eisen's method - trace each technology to the legal rule that governs it - turns an intimidating field into a set of identifiable fights. Once you see the pattern, headlines about solar disputes resolve into familiar categories: jurisdiction, compensation, siting. The law is not a backdrop to the transition; it is the mechanism.

    Try this: Subscribe to your state public utility commission's email docket notifications for one month and skim every order involving solar or storage.

Energy professionals, law and policy students, local officials, and anyone deciding whether to install solar or storage. It is the clearest short map of the legal machinery that decides who pays for, profits from, and permits the clean power transition.

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