People
<font color="red">New Opportunities:</font>
People
Entergy
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Changing U.S. Climate
The states are getting into the act on greenhouse emissions, and the power industry is getting more proactive. What policy measures are appropriate?
Proponents of mandatory carbon limits – though increasing in number – still constitute a minority within the utility industry. Most utilities prefer voluntary greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions reductions, or take the view that CO2 should not be considered a pollutant at all.
Merchant-Energy Bottom Fishers
Private equity rolls the dice.
One way some new players in the power generation market are looking at the valuation is to separate out “extrinsic” value and apply a higher discount rate or “haircut.” An alternative approach is to price the “whole curve” on a risk-adjusted basis.
Roundtable: The Future Of Generation
Meeting tomorrow’s power needs will pose tough choices.
A group of executives and analysts tell Fortnightly that the outlook for generation is positive, because it has to be. But making generation work well—affordably, cleanly, and reliably—won’t be easy.
A Better Measure for Profitability
A new way to measure what matters most: how close a unit comes to meeting its total potential profit.
Approximately 65 percent of capacity additions in the last few years have been gas-fired, combined-cycle units. Recent market conditions have been hard on these new resources, which have suffered from significantly low capacity factors. A better metric would measure a unit's ability to capture peak prices while minimizing shoulder period and off-peak losses. Furthermore, it would measure the extent to which a unit dispatches according to favorable market conditions.
Winners and Losers: Utility Strategy and Shareholder Return
Diversified companies lead (and the globals lag) over the past five years.
Business & Money
Winners and Losers:
Diversified companies lead (and the globals lag) over the past five years.
The unbundling of services and companies in the electricity and natural gas industries have created unprecedented opportunities to reinvent the traditional integrated utility model, with a broader array of attendant risks and rewards. But this past year was clearly one of retrenchment and strategic soul searching, allowing an opportunity to re-examine the sector for winning business formulas.
Power Measurements
Failing the Market-Power Test:
Power Measurement
Failing the Market-Power Test:
How FERC's ruling could affect wholesale power markets.
Power Measurements
Energy trading returns, healthier and wiser.
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.
Frontlines
Did FERC's market power ruling go too far?
Frontlines
Did FERC's market power ruling go too far?
Will utility executives and proponents of electric competition mark July 8, 2004, as a dark day? That was the day the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said it would make no changes to the extremely contentious "interim" screen-the one it adopted back in April to measure market power in electric generation.
Profit Without Costs
An analysis of participant funding in natural gas and electricity markets.
An analysis of participant funding in natural gas and electricity markets.
Of all the issues in the energy industry, no matter how technically or scientifically complex, none is more important than fairness. Price spikes, contract reformation, market manipulation-all hot-button issues during the last four years-revolve around a core value held by practitioners and regulators alike: Are the prices that exist in the marketplace just and reasonable?