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The EPA Speaks Out: The Clean Air Interstate Rule Explained

The Environmental Protection Agency reviews how the multi-pollutant control concept is to work.

Currently, 132 areas do not meet the new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for fine particles or ozone, affecting some 160 million people, or 57 percent of the U.S. population. What efforts are under way by the EPA to bring these areas into compliance?

Capacity Markets: A Bridge to Recovery?

A review of the ongoing evolution of market design.

While it appears that capacity markets are here to stay, there is little consensus regarding the best design. Markets in the United States are in a state of flux, with debate raging over many different capacity market pricing schemes. While the winning recipe has yet to be selected, it is likely that participants in certain markets will witness significant changes.

People

The California Independent System Operator board of governors hired Yakout Mansour to be its president and CEO. And others...

Europe: Picture of a Stalled Competitive Model

Several hurdles remain to further liberalization and full competition in the electricity sector.

Two major trends can be observed in Europe’s electricity sector. First, the increasing importance of private-sector participation in a sector that was traditionally viewed as belonging to the state. The second major trend in Europe is that of the massive amount of merger and acquisition activity across the continent. At the same time, several hurdles remain to further liberalization and full competition in the European electricity sector.

An Expensive Experiment? RTO Dollars and Sense

Financial data raises doubts about whether deregulation benefits outweigh costs.

This year, U.S. electricity consumers will spend more than $1 billion financing the operation of six RTOs. RTO costs have nearly doubled since 2001. Restructuring the energy industry was more costly and more risky than anticipated, and reasonable estimates of RTO costs outweigh nearly all of the benefits anticipated.

Transmission Upgrades: Who Pays?

How to allocate the costs.

An author examines the impact of hypothetical congestion-reduction projects on generators and loads that are part of a vertically integrated utility, and generators independently owned in a deregulated environment.

Debilitating Doctrine

How the filed-rate policy wreaks havoc — and what courts can do about it.

Like many venerable legal rules, the filed-rate doctrine is rarely questioned. Over the last century, it has served many important purposes. However, with deregulated wholesale electric power markets at the federal level and various degrees of deregulation across the states, both the doctrine's continued applicability and usefulness are suspect.

People

New Opportunities:

People

New Opportunities:

Peabody Energy named Charles "Chuck" Burggraf group executive of Colorado operations, responsible for Twentymile Coal Co.'s Twentymile Mine near Oak Creek and development of additional coal reserves in Colorado. Burggraf most recently served as operations manager of the Twentymile Mine.

Wisconsin Public Service promoted Charlie Schrock and Larry Borgard. Schrock is now president and COO of operations; Borgard becomes president and COO of energy delivery.

Solving The Crisis In Unscheduled Power

While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.

While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.

Time is running out. It's been more than two years since the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Joint Inadvertent Interchange Taskforce (JIITF), on which I served, issued its white paper[1] proposing how to price the unscheduled power (inadvertent interchange)1 flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities (BAs).