Electricity rates may be heading skyward sooner than we think.
Do-nothing regulators scare off investment, raising prospects for yet another large-scale power failure.
Is FERC the rightful heir?
The legal battle of the century is ready to begin.
CERA's Daniel Yergin says global gas markets will define the new century, just as oil did for the last 100 years.
Cambridge Energy Research Associates Chairman Daniel Yergin captures in a few words oil's extraordinary past. Might those words one day describe the next 100 years of natural gas development? Talking with Yergin in early November, I found a man convinced that the forces that shaped a global oil market are at work in shaping a global market for natural gas. I'll be sharing some of his words with you.
Regulators are starting to show signs of strain over the restructuring debate.
It would join an RTO but dictate the terms — a dangerous game that has the industry talking.
Frontlines
Wall Street wants utilities to return to basics, but the CEOs worry it won't be enough.
One can certainly understand why so many utility chiefs steered their companies back to basics over the past two years. They read the newspapers. They knew what the financial community was saying. Investors and debt-rating agencies might have overreacted, I suppose. Some on Wall Street seem to think so. Not all utilities should have been downgraded or downsized, they argue. Not all business plans were suspect.
Frontlines
The blackout could doom deregulation, but why treat reliability and reform as either-or?
Driving west near Cleveland on the Ohio Turnpike back in August, a few days after the big blackout, I saw what looked like a small helicopter hovering up ahead, about 25 feet from the top of a transmission tower.
Was this a prank? Had terrorists struck? Or was it the local TV news station, just trying to get a closer look?
Frontlines
The Northeast Blackout goes political.
Nearly a year ago, cover story announced the rise of the chief risk officer (CRO). "Utility senior management is becoming positively enamored with the office of the CRO," we said. "Fully 40 percent of America's CROs work for utilities and energy companies."