Tough Questions
Steve Mitnick has authored four books on the economics, history, and people of the utilities industries. While in the consulting practice leadership of McKinsey & Co. and Marsh & McLennan, he advised utility leaders. He led a transmission development company and was a New York Governor’s chief energy advisor. Mitnick was an expert witness appearing before utility regulatory commissions of six states, D.C., FERC, and in Canada, and taught microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics at Georgetown University.
The density of utility regulatory and policy folks in the more than adequately air-conditioned JW Marriott Austin, gathered there for NARUC's Summer Summit, even after adjusting for the three-digit temperatures outside the conference's hotel, hit record highs. Inside, the debates between the sides on rate design, electrification, regional planning, and the like, were just as hot though less so on the surface.
All too evident were the effects of climate change. One consequence, easy to spot, the much-relaxed dress code of many conference attendees. Sell your stock in tie manufacturers. Another, attendees' preference for rideshare over walking a few treacherous blocks outside, beneath the heat dome.
There wasn't any sign of precipitation during the entire conference. But for the hundred-year storm pouring tough questions like cats and dogs onto our hundred-year-old regulatory processes.
Again and again one question arose in the sessions and the conversations in the hotel corridors after and before. The imperative to drive our electric power system towards zero emission of carbon dioxide is driving us to drink. How do we keep reliability from going down the drain? How do we keep affordability from going up in smoke?