A View on the TXU Leveraged Buyout
Is power a public good or a private goodie?
Professor Mark T. Williams goes in depth on the TXU leveraged buyout.
Fortnightly Magazine - April 2007
Three-Dimensional Price Forecasting
Using the past, present, and future to optimize our understanding of today’s energy markets.
Price forecasting is a significant business process within any energy merchant that trades electricity and natural gas. Business planning, trading, mergers and acquisitions (M&A), even rate-case activities rely upon some type of a price forecast as the foundation to analysis.
The problem with a single forecast is that it never is correct. As soon as the forecast is complete, the world changes and the information becomes dated and often even irrelevant.
Greening the Grid
Can markets co-exist with renewable mandates?
Part way through the Feb. 27 conference on electric competition, it was so quiet you could hear a hockey puck slide across the ice. No, hell had not frozen over. Rather, it was Commissioner Marc Spitzer, who had found a clever story to ease the tension and allay fears that FERC somehow might want to undo the sins of the past, and give up its dream of workable markets for wholesale power.
LNG: Desperately Seeking Supply
Several new LNG plants are under construction, but firm supplies remain scarce. Will empty terminals alleviate gas-price pressures?
To better understand the evolving outlook for LNG and its role in the U.S. gas market, Fortnightly assembled a group of LNG specialists with various perspectives on the issues.
Natural-Gas Revenue Decoupling: Good for the Utility, or for Consumers?
Among a host of arguments for and against RD is the question of upside for consumers.
Retaining adequate earnings is the driving motive for revenue decoupling (RD) among gas utilities, while conservationists view RD as necessary for the removal of resistance to energy efficiency. But the benefits of RD to consumers are less certain.
A New World of Risks
A new set of skills and expertise will be necessary to deal with the risks created by new government mandates, new market developments, and new energy technologies.
Experts say a new set of skills and expertise will be necessary to manage the risk created by new government mandates, new market developments, and new energy technologies.
Penalty Shot
An interpretation of FERC’s first application of EPACT.
At its open meeting on Jan. 18, 2007, FERC unanimously approved settlements with five electric utilities for a total of $22.5 million and other considerations. This action answers some important questions that energy market participants have been asking. In particular, it helps market participants connect some important dots regarding the regulatory landscape in which they must operate, but it also raises important questions that market participants would like answered.
Strong CROs: More Important Than Ever
How important is the risk function at your company?
Wither the chief risk officer (CRO)? Some utilities have moved risk staff under the CFO or controller, while other utilities have pushed CROs down the management hierarchy. But risk remains, and a rudimentary risk function will not do.
Catch the Wave: New Hydro Generation Comes Ashore
Promises of emissions-free power get the ball rolling, but unknowns remain.
After years of feasibility studies, lack of development funds, and escalating fuel costs across the energy spectrum, ocean energy is suddenly a very hot topic.
Basic Instinct
If private equity makes a killing, Congress should require full disclosure.
There’s just no stopping it. The capital amassed by private takeover firms is simply overwhelming. Any reasonable person could conclude that public utilities face wholesale changes in terms of corporate ownership. Investor-owed? You bet. But the “public” part may well give way to “private.”