Federalism and the net metering alternative

There is nothing in federal law that supports the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission extending the reach of its jurisdiction to dictate net metering terms for the hundreds of thousands of retail customers that deploy generation resources in compliance with state or utility net metering programs. Instead, FERC jurisdiction over compensation for retail customer resources exists only when a customer explicitly chooses to participate in FERC jurisdictional markets or programs. At the end of the day, net metering is the type of policy that FERC should encourage states to experiment with and improve.