Fortnightly Magazine - April 2005

The 1990s ushered in the era of deregulation, bringing a reluctance of state commissions to approve large capital expenditures for transmission and distribution (T&D). To make up for this, capital spending has increased dramatically in the last few years. Now the federal government is stepping in to help utilities prime the pump. The final regulations, issued in early 2004 by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, should make it a little easier for utilities, as well as other taxpayers, to use research and development (R&D) expenditures to help lower their effective tax rates.

Series Part 4: Retail supply auctions, known as Basic Generation Service auctions, are being proposed around the country. In a second article on BGS auctions, Andy Dunn presents a different view of load servicing valuations.

With energy innovation growing as a percentage of overall venture capital activity, investors are placing bets on which technologies will emerge as the big winners.

Some utility execs gasp at the shear breadth of environmental proposals being bandied about during the past few weeks. Even the environmentalists are calling "historical" the extent to which different kinds of emissions will be regulated.