Five transmission projects intended to serve New York City and respond to a potential nuclear plant closure suffered setbacks as a divided FERC rejected the developers’ cost allocation proposals and reduced their requested returns on equity.

The Supreme Court’s ideological divide was on display Wednesday as justices sparred with attorneys over whether the EPA should have considered costs before deciding whether to regulate mercury and other pollutants from power plants.

FERC last week ordered hearing and settlement procedures in a dispute over the costs of keeping NRG’s Dunkirk generating plant online for reliability.

Trial staff at FERC has recommended approval of a settlement that would reduce the return on equity of Niagara Mohawk to 10.03% from the current 11.5%.

Eversource Energy (formerly Northeast Utilities) reported higher year-end earnings fueled by a strong fourth quarter and a drop in operating costs.

ISO-NE chose Eversource Energy and National Grid to build a $740 million land-based transmission project to solve reliability problems in the Boston area, rejecting a more expensive undersea cable proposal by NextEra.

Two New England utilities that had power purchase agreements with the Cape Wind Associates’ offshore project have terminated the contracts.

New York regulators have doubled the cap on the amount of solar energy the state’s utilities are required to purchase under its net metering program.

FERC agreed to change the way it calculates returns on equity rates for electric utilities but split over its first application of the new formula in a case involving New England transmission owners.

FERC's technical conference on capacity markets elicited sharply differing views on a variety of design concepts and technical issues.