Texas Staff File Draft Proposal for Adoption on Utility/Affiliate Code of Conduct, Marketing Rules

Staff of the Public Utility Commission of Texas have filed a draft proposal for adoption containing proposed revisions to Subst. R. 25.272, relating to the Code of Conduct for electric utilities and their affiliates.

The Staff proposal does not contain any major changes, and would not adopt prescriptive prohibitions on the shared use of a corporate name or logo by both a utility and affiliate as sought by certain REPs.

In Staff's draft preamble, Staff disagrees with the REP Coalition that it is necessary to include new language prohibiting all joint branding between utilities and competitive affiliates, since, "[t]he existing provisions in PURA §39.157 and §25.272 provide important and potent tools that can effectively address the hypotheticals raised by the REP Coalition."

"In fact, these existing provisions were used to prevent a proposed co-branding activity in Docket No. 39509 [the AEP Retail case]," the draft preamble states.

Reflecting the current Subst. R. §25.272, the proposal for adoption would provide that, "A utility shall not engage in joint marketing, advertising, or promotional activities of its products or services with those of a competitive affiliate in a manner that favors the affiliate. Such joint marketing, advertising, or promotional activities include, but are not limited to, the following activities ..."

The only substantive revision to §25.272 under proposal for adoption would be modifying the existing list of prohibited joint marketing activities to include: "providing links between any of a utility's web sites and social media platforms, and any of the websites and social media platforms of its competitive affiliates."

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