Having dispensed with many of the preliminary issues regarding the new and improved 33% by 2020 Renewables Portfolio Standard, Commissioner Ferron issued a new scoping ruling on Wednesday providing a preliminary list of issues for the remainder of the proceeding.

The scoping ruling extends the proceeding for another two years, however no specific procedural guideline is provided and the scoping ruling does not even give parties an opportunity to comment on the list of issues.

Still, Commissioner Ferron does identify the five generic topics that he deems as the most significant to address moving forward:

  1. Consideration, approval, and relevant revision of 2012 RPS procurement plans
  2. RPS procurement issues more generally
  3. Improvements to least cost best fit methodology and evaluation of bids for RPS procurement
  4. Implementation of statutory requirements for a procurement expenditure limitation methodology for RPS procurement of IOUs
  5. Continued implementation of the feed-in tariff

The ruling also provides some sub-topics and explanation regarding each of these more generic topics.

Essentially, this scoping ruling puts parties on notice as to what the issues for the remainder of the proceeding will be, but asks them to “stay tuned” for a more precise procedural schedule.