"Anyone who assumes rural electric cooperatives will not be fully engaged in whatever system we have . . . if they assume the more competitive it becomes, the less we'll be engaged . . . they're very wrong."
(em Glenn English, CEO,
National Rural Electric
Cooperative Association
Ten terms as a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma's Sixth District taught Glenn English how to build consensus.
Two congressmen and a Clinton Administration official recently weighed in on the future of electric industry deregulation, giving observers an inkling of what they might expect in legislation or policy this year.
Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-LA), the ranking minority member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, spoke before the Electric Generation Association (EGA) January 22. Just three days later he introduced S. 1526.
What are the essential characteristics of the system of governance that will be required for a new, North American electric industry with interconnected and interdependent transmission networks and trading areas?
Electric transmission networks are natural monopolies, as are the many independent network
control systems that coordinate the use of generators and loads and preserve system reliability.
The board of directors of the American Gas Association (A.G.A.) has adopted a resolution asking Congress to repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) and establishing PUHCA repeal as a high priority. A.G.A. says it will actively lobby Congress and the Clinton Administration for repeal. The association seeks to continue the tangible consumer benefits of deregulation and increased competition in the natural gas industry. The A.G.A.
The Senate subcommittee funding the Department of Energy (DOE) may use a carrot-and-stick approach this year to push DOE into finding a quicker solution to the long- and short-term nuclear waste crisis. The debate to get the waste stored safely underground promises an appropriations war that could rival the federal budget skirmish.
Current law authorizes only a permanent repository, not interim storage. Utilities, however, claim they're running out of room to cache their waste.
If you attended any energy conference in the past year, even one on natural gas, I am confident that at least one panel was devoted to the restructuring of the electric industry.
The merger voltage (I) is rising on the electric grid, but it remains to be seen which will win out: current (E) policy or resistance (R) to it.
Management expert Peter F. Drucker has observed that our society has entered a "post-capitalist" stage in which economic activity is organized around information: "The basic economic resource ... is no longer 'capital' nor 'natural resources'...
Merger Menace: Holding Companies and Overcapitalization
States remain as powerless to control holding companies as they were
in 1935, when PUHCA was passed.
During the 1970s and 1980s, diversification swept the gas and electric utility industries. One byproduct of this craze was the formation of a large number of new public utility holding companies, exempt not only from regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but from state regulation over security issues.
Change was the operative word this year in New Orleans at the annual gathering the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. Bob Anderson, Montana commissioner and outgoing president of NARUC, cited global competitiveness, technology and a political swing toward state's rights in his opening address. "State commissions have to respond to these powerful forces," he warned.