Energy Planning and Management Program; Integrated Resource Planning Rules

The Western Area Power Administration (Western) is publishing this final rule to adopt revisions to current regulations that require customers to prepare integrated resource plans (IRP). These revisions are the result of a periodic review of IRP regulations. On August 21, 2007, Western published a Federal Register notice proposing three changes to its integrated resource planning rules. The first change proposed to eliminate the requirement that a member-based association's (MBA) members unanimously approve the MBA's IRP. Approval would only be required by the MBA's governing body. The second change proposed language to encourage customers to prepare regional IRPs even if a customer is not a member of an MBA. The third change proposed to make customer IRPs more readily available to the public by requiring customers to post their IRPs on a publicly available Web site.