People
Florida Water recently named four new senior executive vice presidents, plus news from the Independent Power Producers of New York, The Northwest Power Pool, and others.
Law & Lawyers
The Grid Is Dead
Gas pipelines compete against electric transmission lines. And the pipes are winning.
Years from now, we'll look back on the power crisis as the beginning of the end of electric transmission.
Alternative Energy: Synthetic Fuels Make a Move
The economics — and the environment — are now right to turn coal and coke into gas.
With rising power and gas prices, coal gasification in back in fashion, along with new approaches to cogeneration and combined heat and power.
Saving California with Distributed Generation
A crash program to use small, standby diesel generators to keep the lights on.
Fire up all the small, diesel-powered emergency generating units already installed on site in California. It would erase the power shortage, but it won’t happen without changing the way we think about unit dispatch.
IPOs for Rural Co-ops: Why and How to Set Up the Deal
Equity is the essential currency.
$15 billion in patronage capital lies fallow, locked up in member-owned cooperatives with no way to participate in equity markets. That’s how the S&Ls looked 20 years ago, before they saw the light.
Taken to the Cleaners
Frontlines
FERC's California plan needs pressing, to fix blatant gaffes on NOx, demand bids, and megawatt laundering.
The Song of Competition: Still as Sweet Without Cheap Gas?
More ruminations on the "stranded ratepayer."
Two readers — President and CEO of El Paso Electric James Haines and Richard D. Cudahy, Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Chicago — respond to a letter written about Cudahy's article “The Stranded Ratepayer” (March 15, 2001, p. 26).
How Soon They Forget
The case against re-regulating the electric industry.
Restructuring has already created a badly needed new atmosphere for the industry. There is an infusion of new thinking and vigor that portends bringing the industry's performance up to the standards of the rest of the economy. We have no reason to believe that regulation would fare better in the future than in the past. Let's go forward with electric restructuring. Unfortunately, however, it's turning out to be more difficult than we expected.
The Bush Plan and Beyond: Toward a More Rational U.S. Energy Policy
Any plan to reduce energy consumption should rest on economics — not ideology.
In addition to increasing total U.S. gas consumption to 34.7 Tcf in 2020, it would take another 11.3 Tcf/year to convert existing coal-fired U.S. steam-electric capacity to gas-fired combined-cycle units operating at the same load factor. Clearly, that is a tall order. Nevertheless, we must face the fact that there are few alternatives other than backing out coal-fired generation that would reduce global carbon emissions to a total of less than 870-990 million metric tons between 1991 and 2100. The logical endpoint will be electrification of most stationary energy uses with high-tech renewable or essentially inexhaustible energy sources, and the use of hydrogen from non-fossil-fuel sources as the dominant transportation fuel.
L.A. Loves a Loophole
There's no getting around it—price caps aren't for everyone.
A letter to Michael J. Manning at Fulbright & Jaworski, L.L.P. from FERC General Counsel Kevin P. Madden.