CEO Power Forum: Erroll B. Davis Jr., Chairman, President, and CEO of Alliant Energy
Has the collapse of Enron had any effects on Alliant Energy's business strategy?
What we are finding is that it is more difficult in the marketplace to do business now. People are requiring more guarantees and there is certainly a lot less trust. You're asking for not only guarantees by the company, but guarantees by parents. The energy market is functioning. From our perspective, Enron is not an energy issue. It's a financial issue. We expect there to be impacts in that arena. We certainly have some concerns there. Whenever you have more than 10 congressional committees looking at an issue in an election year, you cannot predict that the outcome is going to be positive. Our concern, of course, is that we avoid heavy-handed solutions and a rush to judgment that can harm competitive markets and burden perfectly good and perfectly functioning power producers.
What is your opinion of FERC's RTO initiative?