Frontlines: Still More Blackouts?
Do-nothing regulators scare off investment, raising prospects for yet another large-scale power failure.
Let's hope the industry spends the money before Mother Nature throws her next pop quiz.
Payable on Demand
Utilities are finding strategic benefits in demand-based metering technologies.
New metering dramatically expands utilities’ data-handling requirements. Stepping up internal facilities for analyzing this data lets utilities experiment with different price signals and incentives. By gauging the effect on overall load and on grid constraints, utilities can maximize the return on existing transmission assets and reduce the need for new investment. Just as important, utilities can use the new data to develop regulated and competitive products for specific customer niches. This is more than a profit opportunity. It is also part of a utility’s public obligation.
The Talent Bubble
As Baby Boomers near retirement age, utilities face the challenge of preparing the next generation of leaders.
Many utilities are sounding alarm bells about an impending shortage of skilled personnel—even amid flat industry growth and high unemployment rates. Who will replace the retiring Baby Boomers?
Plants for Sale: Pricing the New Wave
Financial players and load-serving utilities are looking for power asset deals.
Approximately 60 generation asset sales have been announced in the past two years, and future transaction activity is likely to accelerate. Who are the players, and where might the available plants be located?
European Infrastructure: Billions Needed in Investment
Electricity demand in parts of Europe is on the rise.
A legal and institutional regulatory framework for the EU should spur significant infrastructure investment in the region—if 15 countries can find a way to harmonize their regulatory regimes.
Europe Rewired: A Giant Awakens
EU nations are taking slow steps toward an integrated energy market, but they are many paces ahead of U.S. efforts.
The emerging EU energy market faces barriers to competition and regional integration, exacerbated by the exodus of American companies from the market and the heightened trend toward oligopoly control. Nevertheless, European integration is moving at a faster pace than American initiatives.
Taking Utilities Private: Return of the Barbarians
Experts debate whether KKR's leveraged buyout of UniSource Energy is right for the industry.
“From a public policy standpoint, should a utility that provides a vital public good be owned by a private group that gains ownership by taking on a high degree of debt (risk)?” Mark T. Williams, executive-in-residence at the Finance & Economics Department at Boston University, identifies the quintessential issue that will no doubt be heatedly debated in boardrooms and commissions as more utility CEOs are tempted to become private utilities through a leveraged buyout transaction.
And tempted they will be.
Cross-Sound Blues
Legal challenges continue for the undersea transmission line.
When the Connecticut Siting Council granted a certificate of environmental compatibility and public need approving the Cross-Sound cable in January 2002, it determined that the project would provide a public benefit and would not have an environmental impact constituting “sufficient reason to deny the application.” At the time of this writing, it is in operation pursuant to federal order, while opponents continue to try to shut down the cable. What happened in 2003 to delay the project, and how might the ongoing struggle affect similar projects proposed or under way?
U.S. Glut, Global Opportunities
Where will the next development opportunities occur?
Naturally, many uncertainties cloud the forecast of regional and technological growth. China appears poised to accelerate orders for steam coal plants over the next two years. Issues of financing and market transparency may stifle needed development in Latin America and the former Soviet Union. Finally, today’s high natural gas prices, if sustained, may undercut the CCGT as the most economical power generation choice.
Rethinking Restructuring
Two Cato analysts suggest a return to the past-vertical integration, but now with no state regulators.
The defeat of the energy bill in the Senate last year has thrown electricity restructuring back on its heels. There clearly is no consensus among politicians or academics regarding how this industry ought to be organized or how it might best be regulated. Finding our way out of this morass requires a reconsideration of how we got to this dismal point in our regulatory journey. Doing so suggests a surprising series of conclusions about what has gone wrong and where to go from here.