Texas Utilities Electric Co. and Gulf States Utilities are looking to an April 13 Texas Supreme Court decision (involving GTE-Southwest) that says the state PUC need not employ the actual taxes paid method in setting utility rates. Gulf States will now amend its appeal of a March 20 Texas PUC order forcing a $52.9-million rate reduction, which had included a $25.8-million actual taxes paid component. Texas Utilities had put its faith in legislative relief, but saw its hopes dashed in late April when a Texas state senate committee defeated a proposal to take up the matter.

The Columbia Gas System, Inc., and its principal pipeline subsidiary, Columbia Gas Transmission Corp. (CGT) have filed separate reorganization plans with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

The parent company's plan proposes total distributions of about $3.6 billion to creditors, including $2.3 billion to pay prepetition debt, with $1.1 billion in interest.

The California PUC on April 26 issued interim rules that could allow local telephone competition in the Pacific Bell and GTE-California service areas as early as June. The rules would manage competition between local carriers (CLCs) and franchised local telcos. Under the rules, CLCs could offer individual service components (such as subscriber loops, line side ports, signaling links, signal transfer points, service control points, and dedicated channel network access connections) or choose to handle the entire phone call.

The board of directors of Yankee Energy System, Inc. has elected Ellen J. Quinn v.p., corporate and environmental planning, and Sarah K. Sanders treasurer for the company. Before joining Yankee Energy, Quinn worked as a scientist at Northeast Utilities, and at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Sanders also came from Northeast Utilities, where she worked as an analyst.

David H.

Since the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued its electric "giga-NOPR" on transmission access, stranded investment, and Real-time Information Networks (RINs), the heat is on (em and rising. Congress is busy, too. It's working hard on telecommunications, nuclear waste, and privatization of the federal power marketing agencies, but the odds may be growing against repeal of PURPA (the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act) or PUHCA (the Public Utility Holding Company Act.

All versions of the "revolution" in the electric power industry seem to turn on the prospect of competition in generation.

As competition in the electric industry increases, so does utility concern about the effect of demand-side management (DSM) programs on electricity prices. Because DSM programs often raise prices, several utilities have recently reduced the scope of their DSM programs or focused these programs more on customer service and less on improving energy efficiency (see sidebar). Whether all utilities should follow suit is, however, open to question. We contend that DSM programs do not always exert upward pressure on prices (em just sometimes.

Widespread concern over nuclear plant decommissioning has triggered similar interest in the decommissioning of fossil-fired steam generating stations. This rising interest stems in part from the emergence of a competitive market in electric generation, which, among other things, threatens impairment of assets.

Fossil decommissioning issues are not nearly as contentious as those that attend nuclear plants.

Until a few years ago, the concept of distributed or modular generation was largely academic. Recent developments in the electric power industry, however, have brought this once esoteric subject to the attention of utility executives as well as state and federal policymakers. Centralized, large-scale plans to use modular generators and demand-side management (DSM) to displace utility investments in bulk-power resources and high-voltage transmission projects is unrealistic.

Our 13th annual electric rate-case survey covers electric rate orders issued between

April 1, 1994, and March 31, 1995.

The survey tabulates rates of return on common equity (ROE) approved by state public utility commissions (PUCs) in major electric rate orders, but also includes some cases in which rate of return was not directly at issue, or where a rate adjustment resulted from a settlement agreement.