Fortnightly Magazine - June 15 1998

Try this: Buy wholesale power at 3.2 cents per kilowatt-hour; sell at 2.8 cents. That's the deal in Massachusetts. No wonder Enron fled, seeing no margin for profit.

In fact, when I called a friend at a power marketing company to learn more, he said his company had given up hope and was leaving the state.

Utilities can swallow this loss, he explained. They can defer the four-mill shortfall and accrue it for billing later, like a regulatory asset. The state's Department of Telecommunications and Energy allows it.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY HAS PROPOSED wide-ranging regulations that will increase the cost of electricity production, particularly at the nation's lowest-cost, coal-fired generators.

Despite a doubling of electricity generation since 1970, atmospheric concentrations of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide have declined. Title IV acid rain provisions of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 will result in even greater reductions over the next few years. EPA has nevertheless charted a course to reduce utility emissions of these pollutants even further.

EVEN IF 3,000 WORKERS AT THE LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT of Water and Power should opt for a separation package instead of wholesale layoffs, an ad hoc employee group plans to go ahead with a lawsuit claiming the deal violates California's restructuring statute, Assembly Bill 1890.

That move to go to court - as described by a representative of the Employees Legal Defense Fund - could supply a bargaining chip to help the ELDF save the jobs of a few hundred workers who might not take the package but whose positions are targeted for cuts. The department has about 8,600 employees.

THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION WANTS U.S. UTILITIES AND businesses to know investments are welcome and that processes soon will ensure the safety of American ventures there.

Nevertheless, it appears to favor traditional, American-style utility regulation, setting rates of return and limiting profits.

The Federal Energy Commission of the Russian Federation wants to create competition wherever possible, according to Andrey F. Zadernyuk, the first chairman of the year-old commission.