What are the essential characteristics of the system of governance that will be required for a new, North American electric industry with interconnected and interdependent transmission networks and trading areas?
Electric transmission networks are natural monopolies, as are the many independent network
control systems that coordinate the use of generators and loads and preserve system reliability.
The Senate subcommittee funding the Department of Energy (DOE) may use a carrot-and-stick approach this year to push DOE into finding a quicker solution to the long- and short-term nuclear waste crisis. The debate to get the waste stored safely underground promises an appropriations war that could rival the federal budget skirmish.
Current law authorizes only a permanent repository, not interim storage. Utilities, however, claim they're running out of room to cache their waste.
Merger Menace: Holding Companies and Overcapitalization
States remain as powerless to control holding companies as they were
in 1935, when PUHCA was passed.
During the 1970s and 1980s, diversification swept the gas and electric utility industries. One byproduct of this craze was the formation of a large number of new public utility holding companies, exempt not only from regulation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but from state regulation over security issues.
The United States Enrichment Corp. (USEC), after consulting with the U.S. Treasury Department, has selected investment bankers for its proposed privatization. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 called for USEC to prepare two paths to privatization: an IPO and a negotiated mergers and acquisition transaction with a third party. USEC supplies 86 percent of the domestic uranium enrichment market, and 37 percent of the world market.
Based on competitive bidding, Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc. has been chosen as transaction manager.
allow choice between price, reliability, and scheduling.
Customers with a choice are demanding, and getting, lower electric bills. These customers generally include municipals and large industrials. Municipals, as wholesalers, gained access to alternative suppliers via the Energy Policy Act of 1992.
Investigations of changes in the structure of the electric utility industry are growing at the state level.
The beleaguered Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA) has a new assailant (em U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL). Stearns's bipartisan legislation, H.R. 2562, the "Ratepayer Protection Act," proposes repeal of section 210 of PURPA, which requires electric utilities to purchase power at avoided costs.
Speaking last fall in New York City, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-MI), the ranking Democratic leader of the House Commerce Committee, questioned the need for federal legislation on electric utility restructuring, and even warned the audience that passage of any federal legislation in the 105th Congress to require electric competition was far from guaranteed.
The occasion for the talk was a conference entitled, "Deregulation (em The Changing Electric Utility Industry (em Opportunities and Risks," sponsored by the financial house of Bear, Stearns & Co.
One of my first assignments when I was a reporter for this magazine was a story on the flap over the Environmental Protection Agency's 1990 draft report on electromagnetic fields (EMF).
Bunker Hill. Gettysburg. Pearl Harbor. Iwo Jima. The Cold War. Each of these famous conflicts resonates in our history books. Despite the end of the Cold War, we may face another battle, this time between the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the states over jurisdiction.