Public Power & RTOs: How To Avoid Making Swiss Cheese
Several issues need to be addressed before municipals and co-ops participate significantly in regional transmission organizations.
Congress
Collateral Damage
Credit ratings agencies put the squeeze on merchant power.
Have they gone too far? Have ratings agencies become overzealous in their efforts to rein in energy merchants? Many in the industry are coming to that belief after Aquila, one of the industry's most respected companies and leaders, announced it would exit the merchant energy trading sector in late July. It said it could no longer meet the credit requirements imposed by ratings agencies to maintain that business.
A Dynamic Mission: Protecting Utility Assets
State public service commissions are insisting that utilities adopt risk management programs, and are allowing less pass-through for those that don't.
Many electric utilities have been on high alert since Sept. 11 to protect the assets within their systems from cyber and physical attack. For instance, 21 U.S. nuclear reactors are located within five miles of an airport, but 96 percent of all U.S. reactors were designed without regard for the potential for impact from even a small aircraft.
Vote Yes on Yucca Mountain
Congress needs to uphold the president's designation for a nuclear waste disposal site.
In the interest of security, economics, and common sense, it is important that Congress votes to uphold Yucca Mountain as the nation's central nuclear waste disposal facility.
Barbarians at the Gates
FERC... SEC... CFTC...Congress ... Ratings Agencies... Stockholders... Bondholders... Private Equity Investors?
No one has yet quantified or qualified the devastation to industry reputation, electric competition, or energy companies' future earnings power caused by the current round of energy trading scandals that is shaking the industry to its core.
Derivatives in the Boardroom?
Positioning the risk professional in the corporate hierarchy.
The complexity of energy business deals begs the need for a new type of corporate officer.
Strategy Gurus: Managing Under Chaos
Post-Enron management philosophies for surviving uncertain times.
Dynegy’s Chuck Watson, and other market strategists, talk management philosophy.
Electricity Restructuring is No License for Central Planning
RTOs will perpetuate regional monopolies and political rate regulation.
Economists sometimes get confused - especially when the real world doesn't fit into their neat boxes.
Network industries like telephone and electricity are today's case in point. Economists have viewed these parts of the economy as requiring special attention from regulatory authorities. They're viewed as "natural" monopolies displaying "economies of scope" and characterized by risky "lock-in" or "path dependency" features. That supposedly makes them prone to abuse by their free-market owners, and therefore in need of impartial regulatory oversight.
Point-Counterpoint
Letters to the Editor
David Moore: Chris King’s article, “How Competitive Metering Has Failed,” (Nov. 15, 2001) overstates both the weight the CBO report places on the demand side of the electricity market and the importance it assigns to advanced metering therein. King responds: While Mr. Moore and I seem to disagree on the semantics, it appears that we are in violent agreement on the big picture, as stated in the CBO report.
The Production Tax Credit: Getting More Credit Than It's Due?
State government may have done more for wind power than PTC ever did.
There are many other factors stimulating growth in U.S. wind power development that are more important than the PTC.