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Fulfilling the Value Proposition

The Next M&A Wave: If mergers are once again a potential strategy for accomplishing growth objectives, the previous round of transactions offer several lessons.

The industry stands at an inflection point regarding consolidation. But this time, it is less likely to retreat from more and larger combinations. What’s driving renewed interest in mergers and acquisitions?
Byline: 

Tom Flaherty and Bill Kemp

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Distributed Generation: Hastening Genco Obsolescence?

DER: This final installment of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's series on distributed energy resources investigates efficiency, the environment, and generation displacement.

Do distributed energy resources result in more pollution, or less? Our final installment of the series from Oak Ridge National Laboratory answers the question.
Byline: 

S. W. Hadley, T. K. Stovall

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Windpower: Beyond Boom and Bust

Windpower is caught in a vicious cycle of Washington politics. Escaping the cycle will require visionary leadership in Congress and the utility industry.

With the Production Tax Credit subject to the whims of a fickle Congress, U.S. windpower remains in an ongoing state of uncertainty. Will the United States embrace the technology?
Byline: 

Michael T. Burr

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The Widening Technological Divide

Increased business and regulatory challenges have utilities lagging in investments to meet energy demand a decade from now.

The electricity enterprise has tended through restructuring to become a victim of its historic success in maintaining universal service reliability at ever-lower cost. The essential foundation for restoring enterprise vitality in the coming decade is rebuilding this fundamental public/private partnership, based on technology innovations that can increase the value of electricity service, including providing higher levels of reliability and security.
Byline: 

Kurt E. Yeager

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Giving Credit Where It’s Due

Utilities will gain from new regs for research tax credits.

The 1990s ushered in the era of deregulation, bringing a reluctance of state commissions to approve large capital expenditures for transmission and distribution (T&D). To make up for this, capital spending has increased dramatically in the last few years. Now the federal government is stepping in to help utilities prime the pump. The final regulations, issued in early 2004 by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, should make it a little easier for utilities, as well as other taxpayers, to use research and development (R&D) expenditures to help lower their effective tax rates.
Byline: 

Craig King, Jeff Jones, and Kurt Mars

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Gas Transport Rates: A Puzzling Prospect

Why does FERC want to limit pipeline discounts?

It's certainly puzzling, if not downright peculiar. That's the feeling one gets after studying the notice of inquiry (NOI) that FERC launched late last year, after nearly 10 years of dragging its feet, to re-examine the wisdom of encouraging the practice of rate discounting by interstate natural gas pipelines.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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FERC’s Market-Power Test: First, Do No Harm

Why a new market-power screen—accounting for the relationship between customers and suppliers in the wholesale marketplace—is a necessity.

The philosophy of "first, do no harm" has served the medical profession well for more than 2,000 years. Today, it may be equally good advice for FERC as it seeks to create fair and accurate screens to determine who does and does not have market power. One of the two interim screens FERC is using to evaluate applications for market-based rate authority may create a large number of false positives—power suppliers judged to have market power when in reality they do not. To remedy this, FERC should add a new market-power screen based upon an analysis of the actual relationship between customers and suppliers in the wholesale marketplace.
Byline: 

Louis R. Jahn

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Closing the Green Gap

Will wind power close the gap between state renewable portfolio standards and the current shortfall in viable technologies?

Renewable portfolio standards or mandatory renewable quotas have been established in 20 states and formally considered in 6 more. There is currently an energy shortfall of 118,400 GWh between operating non-hydro renewable electric output today and that required in 2020. Many state and local regulatory agencies have begun to work together to overcome many of the historic barriers to renewables development, such as transmission constraints, permitting, tax policy, and trading. It's clear that they will have to if renewable energy technologies are ever to meet state renewable portfolio standards.
Byline: 

Kent S. Knutson and Peter McMahan

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Letters to the Editor

Why not let the industry make its own decisions on how to meet economy-wide reductions in greenhouse-gas intensity as a percentage of GDP? It can be demonstrated easily that the land requirements for biomass to replace fossil fuels far exceed what is available in the world and the United States, including croplands, pastures, and meadows.
Byline: 

Henry R. Linden

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