News Digest
News Digest
News Digest
News Analysis
NYPA's Nuke Auction: More at Stake Than Price?
Wait for the "second wave," when new products help suppliers escape the trench warfare of pricing.
Telecoms may offer IOUs a model for multiplying market caps by dividing their shareholdings.April 1, 2000
How to justify green power without apologizing for the price.
.Tx
Policymakers have shown considerable interest in the concept of a renewable portfolio standard (RPS), and how it might affect the cost of energy.
The RPS would require electricity providers to include a small amount of renewables-based power - typically less than 3 percent or 4 percent - in their resource mix.
Bigger payoffs for larger electric customers should surprise no one, says one exec, while a consultant blames the Fortnightly for obscuring the point.
It is not surprising that authors Bierman, Nelson and Stover ("Anomalies in Residential Electric Rates: Harbinger of Competition?" Public Utilities Fortnightly, July 15, 1999) found an increasing differential between residential and industrial rates. It also is not surprising that there is a correlation with deregulation activities. This situation is the natural result of competition causing subsidies to unwind.
As utility takeovers break new ground, the FERC ponders proposed rules, perhaps already out of date.
A year ago, when U.S. Antitrust Czar Joel Klein talked of a "window of opportunity" for electric utility mergers, he didn't predict when it would close.
And it hasn't yet.
In the 12 months leading up to January 1998, when Klein had addressed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission through its "Distinguished Speakers" series, only the ill-timed Primergy deal had been turned down. The next year, 1998, would prove no different.
How to survive in a seller's market.
Divesting power plants today may look very much like a seller's market. Buyers may believe they lack the necessary leverage to take an aggressive position on workforce transition.
We are the world's experts on contingencies," boasted Michehl Ghent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council, appearing in Houston on Sept. 17 at the Sixth Annual DOE/NARUC Electricity Forum. It was the very day day that NERC released its first comprehensive report on readiness in the electric utility industry in correcting computer software problems associated with the dawning the next century, which for the first time will require computers, software programs and embedded chips to the use four digits to identify the year beginning with turnover from 1999 to 2000.
Federal Agencies
NOX EMISSIONS. Generating heavy criticism from industry, on September 24 the Environmental Protection Agency released its long-awaited final rules on nitrogen oxide emissions, outlining a plan to reduce NOx by 28 percent by year 2007 in some 22 states and the District of Columbia, with state implementation plans due by September 1999 and controls in place by 2003, to be carried out through a "cap and trade" program to buy and sell NOx emissions credits.