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Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Changing U.S. Climate

The states are getting into the act on greenhouse emissions, and the power industry is getting more proactive. What policy measures are appropriate?

Proponents of mandatory carbon limits – though increasing in number – still constitute a minority within the utility industry. Most utilities prefer voluntary greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions reductions, or take the view that CO2 should not be considered a pollutant at all.
Byline: 

Sanne B. Jacobsen, Neil J. Numark And Paloma Sarria

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A New World Order

Pressure for national legislation builds as the Northeastern U.S. goes it alone and carbon trading takes off in the European Union.

Domestic and international pressures are building rapidly on the United States to enact some form of legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, as a spate of recent developments turns up the heat on the Bush administration. Internal pressure is building on several fronts
Byline: 

Peter Fontaine

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Risk Appetites: How Hungry Are Utility Investors?

An effective risk-management strategy depends on knowing your shareholder’s idea of value.

How do shareholder relations link to risk-management policy? The answer: Utilities have to communicate to shareholders a particular set of operating strategies that will attain certain financial results. Risky activities both enhance and threaten those financial results. Therefore, policies must define how risky strategies are formulated, approved, controlled, and measured.
Byline: 

David C. Shimko

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Betting on Broadband

Are consumer broadband over powerline (BPL) services enough to make the business case for utilities?

After years of development, technology to deliver high-speed data over the existing electric power delivery network has emerged in the marketplace. In some sections of Cincinnati and Manassas, Va., consumers now have an alternative to DSL and cable for broadband Internet access. It's real and it works.
Byline: 

Karen George

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Merchant Power: Ratepayers Back At Risk

A review of power plant deals in 2004 shows that utilities are buying.

Whether evolution or devolution, the merchant deals done to date show movement to a familiar structure; ratepayers are back at risk. While ratepayers have benefitted from merchant plants, they also paid since competition began with PURPA in 1978, and many of the acquisitions put them at risk for future changes in power values and fuel costs.
Byline: 

Jeff Bodington

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LICAP and Its Lessons: A Kink in the Curve

Doubts intensify over New England’s radical new market for electric capacity.

What began nearly two years ago as a simple request by power producers to boost their chances for recovering fixed costs for several power plants in Connecticut has mushroomed into the single most complicated case now pending before FERC.
Byline: 

Bruce W. Radford

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Navigating the Gray Areas

Successful energy market development means understanding new subtleties and nuances.

A recent McKinsey article proclaimed, “More progress has been made improving the governance of U.S. corporations during the past couple of years than in the several decades preceding them." Yet, revelations from the disgraceful behavior associated with Enron and related events continue to surface and confuse the issue of what is needed today to move energy markets forward.
Byline: 

William F. Hederman

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Merchant-Energy Bottom Fishers

Private equity rolls the dice.

One way some new players in the power generation market are looking at the valuation is to separate out “extrinsic” value and apply a higher discount rate or “haircut.” An alternative approach is to price the “whole curve” on a risk-adjusted basis.
Byline: 

Gary L. Hunt and Grant Thain

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People (January 2005)

AGL Resources announced the reorganization of its six-state territory into two divisions. Briggs L. Tobin was named GE's senior counsel for transactions. The Board of Directors of CH Energy Group Inc. appointed Joseph J. DeVirgilio Jr. to the position of executive vice president of corporate services and administration. And others ...
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A Better Merchant Mousetrap?

The failure of the Empire Connection spells trouble for private transmission projects.

It’s at the very heart of all policy initiatives for both electric generation and transmission: How do you attract the right amount of investment without creating an overbuilt market, or a boom-bust scenario? In recent months, utility executives, financiers, and policy-makers have been asking this question with even greater zeal than usual.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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