Public Power & RTOs: How To Avoid Making Swiss Cheese
Several issues need to be addressed before municipals and co-ops participate significantly in regional transmission organizations.
Edison Electric Institute
Strategy Gurus: Managing Under Chaos
Post-Enron management philosophies for surviving uncertain times.
Dynegy’s Chuck Watson, and other market strategists, talk management philosophy.
CEO Power Forum: Leadership and Credibility in Uncertain Times
The leaders of the electric power industry greatly want to put a positive spin on the current state of affairs in their business.
Enron’s bankruptcy and California’s failed restructuring experience, as well as credit and shareholder concerns, are preventing senior executives from spending adequate time on developing new growth opportunities for their companies and lobbying for electric industry competition.
The Doomsday Scenario
Debt + secret triggers = another Enron.
Much the same way that bankers used to worry about a “run on the bank,” where there is an overwhelming demand for liquidity that causes a solvent bank to fail, so should energy companies be worried that their use of material adverse change (MAC) clauses might trigger an overwhelming demand for liquidity that causes a once solvent energy company to fail. Of course, the banks now have the Fed to protect the financial system from a liquidity crisis. No such luck for the energy industry.
Digital Terrorism: Holes in the Firewall?
Plugging cyber security holes isn't as easy as everyone wants to think.
Experts show that utilities will have to do more than just post guards around power plants to protect against terrorist attacks.
Onward, Kyoto!
With a nascent emissions market, U.S. companies may not be so grateful they’re out of the club.
Domestic energy companies may have breathed a sigh of relief last March when the United States pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol. Gone was the specter of expensive compliance with emissions reduction targets set by the treaty. So long as they don't care about expanding globally or entering emerging emissions trading markets, they probably have a reason to think they've dodged the emissions bullet.
Who’s Minding The Grid?
Some argue that gas pipelines might substitute … but … nothing will do away with the need for more transmission.
Our nation’s transmission infrastructure is increasingly unable to meet new demands for power created by rapidly changing electricity markets. Although reliability protocols ensure against catastrophic failure, there is ample evidence today that the grid is too congested.
Waiting to Exhale
Courts Deliberate on the Fate of Order 2000: The transmission industry may have to wait even longer for a final decision on challenges to Order 2000 if FERC gets its way.
Though the D.C. Circuit Court could very well add to the delay in resolving some thorny issues of Order 2000, it appears that the court has essentially given the challengers a partial victory, even before a decision is rendered.
Frontlines
Energy companies' best-laid plans in 2001 were put on hold, after circumstance and fate stepped in.
Frontlines
The Year of Living Dangerously
Special Report
Industry hopes its centralized assets aren't in the crosshairs.
Industry hopes its centralized assets aren't in the crosshairs.
When the topic of U.S. energy security comes up, OPEC typically springs to mind. Sure enough, following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, politicians and energy executives quickly rallied before the public for less reliance on oil supply from OPEC member nations, and for bolstering domestic energy production.