With budget battles heating up in Washington, Congress and the Obama administration are squaring off to debate energy policy legislation. While Democratic leadership favors a clean energy standard, Republican lawmakers are focused on blocking administration initiatives to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. A compromise approach might bring substantial changes to America’s national energy strategy.

Could a TVA-style Fed Corp model be the answer to America’s ongoing nuclear waste dilemma? A bill sponsored by the new Senate Energy Committee chairman proposes to create just such a corporation. Constellation’s Henry (Brew) Barron discusses the proposal — and its prospects for enactment in the current political environment.

In its March 2005 report to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) repeated its request for enhanced civil penalty authority. When Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT), it granted FERC all the authority that it had requested, and more. The new director of FERC’s Office of Market Oversight and Investigations (OMOI) called the new penalty authority “awesome.”¹

Presenting a program to stimulate robust coal-gasification technology deployment at low federal cost.

Near-term deployment of gasification technologies can supplement natural-gas supply, reduce demand, and promote long-term U.S. energy security and affordability. But near-term deployment must overcome high capital costs that affect commercial competitiveness and capital availability.

People

New Positions:

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, stepped into the role of chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, succeeding Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., who is leaving Congress.

Duke Energy named David Hauser as its permanent CFO. He had been acting CFO since November. He succeeds Robert Brace, who resigned.

Technology Corridor

Reliability demands will drive automation investments.

In the days and weeks following Aug. 14, 2003, politicians scrambled to assess blame for the blackouts that plagued the United States and Canada.

Even today, as the blame game proceeds, the precise cause of the grid's collapse remains uncertain. But Republicans, Democrats, and the utility industry alike seem to agree on one thing: the U.S. power grid needs major investment.

After 10 years of waiting, some experts say a Republican-controlled Congress and a patriotic mood will make the difference in passing energy legislation this year.

Could this be the year that Congress passes a comprehensive national energy bill? That's the question on the mind of the utilities industry. Some say with Republicans controlling both the U.S. House and Senate-not to mention the presidency-the prospects for comprehensive energy legislation are bright. But some pundits are not so sure.

On a purely intellectual level, it is difficult to justify the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA). Sixty years after passage, PUHCA has become an anachronism (em a fact well articulated in comments filed in response to the Concept Release on the modernization of the Act issued last November by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).1 More recently, the SEC's Division of Investment Management actually recommended a conditional repeal (see sidebar).

Over 300 bills were introduced in the first week of the new Congress that convened in January, among them a bill by Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-LA) aimed at correcting the government's seriously flawed nuclear waste storage program. Johnston heralded S.