Utilities are enjoying some of the best financing terms anybody’s ever seen. Is the party winding down?
Conditions are ideal for utility financing—but not forever. Although interest rates remain low, policy changes weigh on capital structures.
Bold plan for independence, or more partisan overreach?
By Michael T. Burr, Editor-in-Chief
The Republican nominee’s energy plan doesn’t say much about electricity or natural gas. But what it does say should sound familiar to anyone who’s followed energy policy for more than four years.
Clean energy jobs will be gone soon, if America fails to commit.
America needs an energy policy today that will bring together our best and brightest, harness the limitless capabilities of our research institutions, and invest whatever it takes to ensure America’s leadership in clean energy technologies. The result will be to create billion-dollar industries and millions of new jobs.
(June 2011) Duke and ATC team up to build transmission lines; AEP installs bioreactor to control selenium emissions; NextEra buys 100 MW of wind from Google; Ocean Power Technologies awards contracts for wave power array; Kansas City picks Elster; BC Hydro picks Itron; plus contracts and developments involving Tres Amigas, Ioxus, Opower and others.
Rewards, challenges and options for rate-based investments.
Paul Alvarez and Benjamin Hodges
Utilities traditionally have met renewable portfolio standards with power purchases from IPPs. But new approaches are allowing utilities to build their rate bases with investments in solar generation.
How to account for lack of strong price signals. A hard year puts deregulation to the test.
Catherine McDonough and Robert Kraus
The greatest benefits of time-of-use pricing come from avoided costs of peaking power and T&D capacity—but only if hourly retail prices accurately model the true costs of delivered energy, including scarcity rents. Restoring the missing price signals will encourage economic investments in AMI, conservation and system capacity.
A clear and present need for nuclear energy expansion.
C.E. (Gene) Carpenter Jr.
Addressing climate change will require extending the life of today’s nuclear fleet and laying the foundation for new plants.
Mixed signals leave developers wary of building new infrastructure.
Richard Stavros, Executive Editor
FERC Chairman Joseph Kelliher gives mixed signals that leave developers wary of committing to investments in new infrastructure, given his clear desire to affect positive change, while appearing to argue for policy decisions that are politically safe but arguably inconsistent.
New Opportunities:
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New Opportunities:
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Pat Wood III said he would leave the commission at the conclusion of his term of office June 30. Wood is the longest-serving appointee of George W. Bush, who as governor of Texas in 1995 appointed him to the Texas PUC.
Renewable Energy in the 21st Century:
Philip J. Deutch
Perspective
Renewable Energy in the 21st Century:
State involvement in promoting renewable technologies has profound implications for the future of the energy industry.
Election-year posturing seems to have prevented the federal government from reaching consensus on a number of energy issues ranging from standard market design to global warming, MBTE to Kyoto, ANWR to nuclear waste disposal.
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