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Utility Valuation: Shedding Light on the Black Box

Experts debate how energy companies should be valued in the wake of electric restructuring and Enron.

Credit downgrades, bankruptcy, and investor backlash against energy companies has exposed how inadequate the valuation of energy companies is. Experts debate just how to value the industry.
Byline: 

Richard Stavros

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Wag the Dog

Pack journalists feed off PG&E letter.

Was Pacific Gas and Electric’s recent customer mailing of a dog-bite letter and meter-reading schedule a selfless attempt to protect its employees from vicious canines? Or was the notice to dog owners a catty move to get the California press off the scent of Pacific Gas and Electric’s bankruptcy proceedings?
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Off Peak

Dynegy is hungry for your attention.<b> </b>

Off Peak

December 2001

Please Pass the Potatoes

 

Dynegy is hungry for your attention.

Dynegy's Chuck Watson never had much of an appetite for seeing his company's name in lights.

Byline: 
William Mahoney
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Frontlines

Energy companies' best-laid plans in 2001 were put on hold, after circumstance and fate stepped in.

Frontlines

The Year of Living Dangerously

Byline: 
Richard Stavros
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Special Report

Industry hopes its centralized assets aren't in the crosshairs.


 

Industry hopes its centralized assets aren't in the crosshairs.

When the topic of U.S. energy security comes up, OPEC typically springs to mind. Sure enough, following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, politicians and energy executives quickly rallied before the public for less reliance on oil supply from OPEC member nations, and for bolstering domestic energy production.

Byline: 
Richard Stavros
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Natural Gas Hedging: A Primer for Utilities and Regulators

What commissions need to learn. <br>What LDCs should already know.

Natural Gas Hedging: A Primer for Utilities and Regulators



 

What commissions need to learn.
What LDCs should already know.

The facts are now in. If utilities had hedged their natural gas purchases during the 1990s, they could have earned windfalls for those they serve, given the wild price gyrations of the past decade (). Yet few if any households or businesses saw any windfall, because few utilities were engaged in futures and other derivatives markets.

Byline: 
John H. Herbert
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The Bush Plan and Beyond: Toward a More Rational U.S. Energy Policy

Any plan to reduce energy consumption should rest on economics — not ideology.

In addition to increasing total U.S. gas consumption to 34.7 Tcf in 2020, it would take another 11.3 Tcf/year to convert existing coal-fired U.S. steam-electric capacity to gas-fired combined-cycle units operating at the same load factor. Clearly, that is a tall order. Nevertheless, we must face the fact that there are few alternatives other than backing out coal-fired generation that would reduce global carbon emissions to a total of less than 870-990 million metric tons between 1991 and 2100. The logical endpoint will be electrification of most stationary energy uses with high-tech renewable or essentially inexhaustible energy sources, and the use of hydrogen from non-fossil-fuel sources as the dominant transportation fuel.
Byline: 

Henry R. Linden

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News Digest

 

News Digest


 

Byline: 
News Digest was compiled by Carl J. Levesque, associate editor for Public Utilities Fortnightly.
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