The Environmental Protection Agency reviews how the multi-pollutant control concept is to work.
Currently, 132 areas do not meet the new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for fine particles or ozone, affecting some 160 million people, or 57 percent of the U.S. population. What efforts are under way by the EPA to bring these areas into compliance?
A review of the ongoing evolution of market design.
Several hurdles remain to further liberalization and full competition in the electricity sector.
Financial data raises doubts about whether deregulation benefits outweigh costs.
Ratemaking Special Report
(November 2004) Fixing an appropriate rate of return on equity (ROE) for electric utility investors marks a fundamental component of the typical cost-of-service rate case conducted across the nation by state public utility commissions (PUCs). The following survey demonstrates the results of such cases, as observed over the past year.
Perspective
How the filed-rate policy wreaks havoc- and what courts can do about it.
Like many venerable legal rules, the filed-rate doctrine is rarely questioned. Over the last century, it has served many important purposes. However, with deregulated wholesale electric power markets at the federal level and various degrees of deregulation across the states, both the doctrine's continued applicability and usefulness are suspect.
Transmission Upgrades:
How to allocate the costs.
Efforts to establish and quantify congestion-reduction and loss-reduction projects are progressing in electric markets with locational marginal price (LMP) regimes. The Path 15 upgrade approval by the California ISO two years ago was largely based upon its economic benefits. A draft report from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), , states that ERCOT will consider transmission projects that are "economically justified by the reduction of congestion and losses."1
People
New Opportunities:
Peabody Energy named Charles "Chuck" Burggraf group executive of Colorado operations, responsible for Twentymile Coal Co.'s Twentymile Mine near Oak Creek and development of additional coal reserves in Colorado. Burggraf most recently served as operations manager of the Twentymile Mine.
Wisconsin Public Service promoted Charlie Schrock and Larry Borgard. Schrock is now president and COO of operations; Borgard becomes president and COO of energy delivery.
While NAESB and NERC struggle over the issue, North America steadily drifts toward unreliability.
Time is running out. It's been more than two years since the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) Joint Inadvertent Interchange Taskforce (JIITF), on which I served, issued its white paper[1] proposing how to price the unscheduled power (inadvertent interchange)1 flowing between NERC-certified balancing authorities (BAs).