Business & Money

The Securities and Exchange Commission denies approval of the AEP/CSW merger. What will that mean for industry consolidation?

What's wrong the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA)? Perhaps the date! On May 3, 2005, a Securities and Exchange (SEC) administrative law judge (ALJ) handed down a ruling that denied the application of American Electric Power Co. (AEP) seeking approval of its acquisition of Central and South West Corp.

Power Measurement

Clean Air by 2015:

Which utilities and states will be most affected by the new rules?

The May issue of included a lengthy discussion by EPA officials of the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), explaining the details behind the landmark regulations in terms of benefits and costs (). But which states, companies, and generating units will be most affected by the new rules?

People

New Opportunities:

Aquila Inc. announced that Norma F. Dunn has been named senior vice president, corporate communications. Prior to joining Aquila, Dunn worked 17 years in a variety of roles of increasing responsibility for El Paso Corp.

Frontlines

What's behind today's oddball mergers?

Look at the gargantuan, gerrymandered service territories you would get with the latest pending merger deals: Exelon-PSEG, Duke-Cinergy, and Warren Buffet's bid to combine PacifiCorp with his MidAmerican Energy. Now ask yourself if they make any sense.

Recent attrition raises the question: Consolidation or death spiral?

When GridAmerica LLC closes its doors at the end of this year, the number of independent transmission companies (transcos) in the United States will fall by one-fourth. Only three ITCs will remain: American Transmission Co. (ATC), International Transmission Co. (ITC), and Trans-Elect Inc.

Business & Money

Financial buyers are snapping up power plants faster than at any time in history. The asset shift represents an interim step in a wholesale-market transformation.

A dam broke last year, releasing a wave that even now is spreading through the U.S. power industry.

Environmental Emissions:

The cost to power markets of the Clean Air Interstate Rule depends on the ability to trade mercury.

Billions of dollars of ratepayer money will be spent in the next decade on pollution-control equipment to meet new rules that amount to an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bet that mercury can be traded like soybeans, oil, and more pertinent, SO2 and NOx.

THE CEO POWER FORUM

Not all utility CEOs are created equal...We take this to be self-evident after the bankruptcies, ratings downgrades, balance-sheet blowups, and financial debacles that took place in the industry in the last five years.

Those utility CEOs that kept the corporate ship sailing smoothly, growing their companies right through those turbulent times also evidenced this premise.

Commission Watch

Electric M&A:

The merger with PSE&G may herald a new industry structure, squarely at odds with regional markets.

Call it the merger that broke the bank.

The marriage between Exelon and PSEG, owner of the utility Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G), formally proposed in February in papers filed at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), would create the largest electric utility in the United States.

Frontlines

Where Entergy leads, will Wal-Mart follow?

It's only the beginning of the beginning, but Entergy's move to form a single-company RTO-lite across its service territory in Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana has everyone talking.

With its novel plan, Entergy has now found a way to embrace the concept of a regional transmission organization (RTO) and yet save face, without surrendering to full federal oversight.