Technology exists to sequester carbon-but will utilities ever buy in?

The vision: A nation filled with new, coal-fired power plants that provide inexpensive, secure power for Americans, while emitting few pollutants and sequestering the carbon dioxide produced. In other words, a power plant that not only industry and environmentalists can agree on, but one that utilities can finance and operate profitably.

Vegetation that helps break down toxins debuts at manufactured gas plant site.

Planting swaths of rye grass and mulberry trees and sowing the soil with bacteria are hardly standard operating procedure when it comes to cleaning up manufactured gas plant sites. But if Bill Bogan has his way, it just might be.

To the Editor:

In your recent article about New York's "demand curve" ("New York Throws a Curve," May 15), opponents dismiss the role of installed capacity in restructured electric markets. Instead, they suggest a complete reliance on revenues from the energy market to recover all fixed costs. Yet, as your article notes, an energy-only approach might require price spikes of up to $30,000/MWh to cover the fixed costs of "peaking" units that seldom run but are needed for reliability.

New Positions:

The Allegheny Energy Inc. board of directors named Florida Power & Light Co. President Paul Evanson its new chairman, replacing the retiring Alan J. Noia. Allegheny's interim president, Jay Pifer, assumed the duties of COO at Allegheny. Evanson had been with Florida Power and Light since 1992. He will be replaced temporarily by Lew Hay, chairman and CEO of FPL Group, until a permanent replacement is found.

The ISO graples with the politics of scarity.

In regions that have embraced electric industry restructuring, such as New York, New England, and the mid-Atlantic states, where independent system operators (ISOs) have taken over and the standard market design (SMD) has grabbed a foothold over bulk power transactions, one fascinating question still dogs theorists and policymakers alike:

Is a power supply shortage really all that bad?

Can RTO market monitors really be independent?

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) initiatives on regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and standard market design give new prominence to the market monitoring institution (MMI), a novel regulatory tool never before contemplated in legislation.¹