Although utilities are refocusing attention on their traditional utility businesses, it is clear that the traditional utility decision-making framework is not sufficiently robust to meet the needs of today's utility executive. An effective executive decision framework provides better answers in the complex utility environment that exists today.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the central question: Could any of this have been avoided? Many experts believe that the new authority given to FERC to enforce mandatory reliability standards, as per the Energy Policy Act of 2005, will bring greater transparency to the process of protecting critical infrastructure.

Companies continue to embrace the back-to-basics strategy, and investors seem to think that it is paying off.

Federal loan guarantees and other incentives can clear the hurdles to near-term deployment of gasification technologies.

Business & Money

Sticking to the Knitting:

A review of three years of post-Enron stock performance by electric utilities.

Immediately following the Enron collapse, investors dumped the stock of any electric power company that appeared to be pursuing non-traditional growth strategies. Any company that emphasized unregulated businesses-investments in overseas assets, merchant power plant development, and energy marketing and trading-was suspect.

(November 2004) Fixing an appropriate rate of return on equity (ROE) for electric utility investors marks a fundamental component of the typical cost-of-service rate case conducted across the nation by state public utility commissions (PUCs). The following survey demonstrates the results of such cases, as observed over the past year.

Commission Watch

FERC Versus Bankruptcy Jurisdiction:

Two recent articles in the ¹ discussed conflicts that have emerged in the last 18 months over the respective jurisdictions of bankruptcy courts under the Bankruptcy Code² and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) under the Federal Power Act.³ This occurs when a debtor seeks the bankruptcy court's approval under Section 365(a) of the code⁴ to reject a wholesale electricity sales contract that is a FERC-jurisdictional rate.