Banks are reshaping the energy-trading landscape. When the dust settles, utility companies will face different strategic horizons.
Utility executives face volatile energy markets, skyrocketing fuel prices, and changing federal energy policies. How are utilities benefiting from the turnaround in energy trading?
Despite several high-profile deals, utilities remain cautious about outsourcing their key business processes.
It seems that "outsourcing" has become a dirty word among utility executives. But though left unsaid in polite conversation, the word is still on everybody's mind. They might even be doing it. They just aren't talking about it.
Gas utilities and state commissions must work together to help preserve rates of return, encourage conservation, and lower customers’ bills.
Recent attrition raises the question: Consolidation or death spiral?
Exelon Chairman, President, and CEO John W. Rowe, on the proposed merger that would create the largest utility in the United States.
Why broadband over power line (BPL) can't stand alone as a high-speed Internet offering.
Commission Watch
What everybody missed in setting up the regional grids.
While the electric utility industry has largely agreed on what elements to include in a standard market design (SMD) to govern wholesale power trading in a given region, recent experience shows that the regulators from time to time have overlooked a number of things.
Should transmission owners get paid extra for distance and voltage?
Power Measurement
Energy trading returns, healthier and wiser.
The recent announcement of a trading joint venture between TXU and Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) is the latest in a series of positive news items supporting the return of energy trading. Wall Street firms continue to expand into the energy-trading sector, with Citigroup as well as CSFB moving into an area already well represented by the likes of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and UBS.
Commission Watch
The commission's power grab over bankruptcy courts condemns merchants to a corporate netherworld.
Since we last visited the conflict between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and bankruptcy courts over who decides whether a debtor can terminate unprofitable power contracts,1 a new district court decision out of Texas has come down tilting the field in favor of FERC's assertion of exclusive authority.