CEE

Does demand response increase or decrease overall electricity usage?

Electricity demand in parts of Europe is on the rise.

The European Union (EU), unlike the United States, enters 2004 with neither a constitution nor a European regulatory agency to oversee the EU's "single market" goals in energy. The EU, however, faces many cross-border issues affecting trade in electricity and natural gas, just as the United States does. While the member countries of the EU have become more energy efficient, new investment in all segments of electric infrastructure still is needed.

A review of which technologies and companies stand to win and lose as a result of the 2003 blackout.

 

Mishap, human error, and malice regularly crash the electric system. We have lurched from the Western economic power crisis of 1999-2000 to the Eastern reliability power crisis of 2003. Neither more studies nor more blackouts have changed what's been built-an excessive quantity of large generation plants dependent on relatively few major transmission lines. On its current course, the grid's inevitable destination is disaster.

Coal gasification as a transition plan to build lead time to develop sustainable, climate-friendly energy technologies.

Editor's Note

Several of the sources for this article and accompanying sidebars are referenced numerous times.

News Digest was compiled by Carl J. Levesque, editorial assistant, Lori A. Burkhart, contributing legal editor, and Bruce W. Radford, editor. For continual news updates, see www.pur.com.Nuclear Power

Transmission & ISOs

Transco Independence. Granting Entergy's request for a declaratory order, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ruled in a case of first impression that a stand-alone transmission company ("transco") would meet the test in Order 888 for independent system operators despite passive ownership by a power producer or other market participant.

The overwhelming impression is one of growth (em in volume and in the number of participants.

The early 1990s was an anxious period for advocates of emissions trading. Concerns about whether the sulfur dioxide allowance market would ever develop tempered the heady success of the first national emissions trading program implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, Title IV. These concerns were heightened when in May 1992, Wisconsin Power & Light traded 10,000 allowances to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The California Public Utilities Commission elected members to two boards overseeing energy efficiency and low-income programs. The board for energy efficiency programs members are: Acting Chair Sara Steck Myers, CEERT; Dave Gamson, CPUC commissioner advisor; Michael Messenger, California Energy Commission; Peter Miller, Natural Resources Defense Council; Mark Thayer, San Diego State University; Ortensia Lopez, Greenlining Institute; Charles Goldman, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; Michael Shame, UCAN; and Don Schultz, CPUC Office of Ratepayer Advocates.

Can DSM live with

competition?

Between 1992 and 1994, demand-side management (DSM) spending grew at a median annual rate of 16 percent for a survey group of 37 electric utilities (those reporting DSM expenditures of at least $5 million for 1993). For 1994-98, however, the same utilities project a median annual decline of 3 percent in their DSM expenditures. (Taken together, the 37 utilities - located primarily along the east and west coasts and in the industrial Midwest - accounted for 51.9 percent of all DSM expenditures for U.S.

Electric utilities nationwide are attempting to retreat from commitments to energy efficiency (em a retreat that will benefit few customers, while damaging many. This retreat is driven by fear of retail wheeling (em that consumers will be able to shop for the lowest prices among competing entities. In turn, the threat of retail wheeling has spurred utilities to a frantic scramble to cut costs and trim rates.