The States

Letters to the Editor

(December 2006) Charles A. King, California ISO: “Kicked Off and On Schedule” reasonably captures many of the implementation issues and stakeholder concerns surrounding the California Independent System Operator Market Redesign and Technology Upgrade program. However, I was somewhat disappointed that the article offered few details about the benefits MRTU will provide.

Upstate Uproar

Retail Choice: New York utilities cry “bait and switch,” but it’s not that simple.

If you take electric service from Orange & Rockland Utilities, the Catskills affiliate of Manhattan’s Con Ed, you can switch to a competitive retail supplier and score a 7 percent discount. But the discount lasts for two months. After that, if you haven’t signed a contract or taken some other action to lock in your discount, your ESCO can boost the commodity rate back to the old level—or even higher.

Perspective

Renewable Energy in the 21st Century:

Perspective

Renewable Energy in the 21st Century:

State involvement in promoting renewable technologies has profound implications for the future of the energy industry.

Election-year posturing seems to have prevented the federal government from reaching consensus on a number of energy issues ranging from standard market design to global warming, MBTE to Kyoto, ANWR to nuclear waste disposal.

RPS: Should States Get Credit?

The risks in renewable portfolio standards.

State-mandated renewable portfolio standards are being adopted across the country to facilitate the development of renewable energy projects. Nineteen states have enacted renewable portfolio standards, but significant barriers remain to fulfill the potential of RPS. Will RPS actually result in a substantial amount of new project construction?

The Need for Nuclear Now

States will play a significant role in the resurgence of nuclear power plants in America.

At times, various conditions align and set the stage for achieving goals that may have appeared to be unreachable. Last summer, the Boston Red Sox were all but eliminated from contention, but then won an amazing stretch of baseball games that resulted in a World Series championship.

A similar scenario can be applied to the U.S. nuclear industry-producer of a steady, low-cost, environmentally important electricity source poised to thrive with the possibility of new plant construction in the not-so-distant future.