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Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Changing U.S. Climate
The states are getting into the act on greenhouse emissions, and the power industry is getting more proactive. What policy measures are appropriate?
Proponents of mandatory carbon limits – though increasing in number – still constitute a minority within the utility industry. Most utilities prefer voluntary greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions reductions, or take the view that CO2 should not be considered a pollutant at all.
Merchant-Energy Bottom Fishers
Private equity rolls the dice.
One way some new players in the power generation market are looking at the valuation is to separate out “extrinsic” value and apply a higher discount rate or “haircut.” An alternative approach is to price the “whole curve” on a risk-adjusted basis.
Roundtable: The Future Of Generation
Meeting tomorrow’s power needs will pose tough choices.
A group of executives and analysts tell Fortnightly that the outlook for generation is positive, because it has to be. But making generation work well—affordably, cleanly, and reliably—won’t be easy.
A Better Measure for Profitability
A new way to measure what matters most: how close a unit comes to meeting its total potential profit.
Approximately 65 percent of capacity additions in the last few years have been gas-fired, combined-cycle units. Recent market conditions have been hard on these new resources, which have suffered from significantly low capacity factors. A better metric would measure a unit's ability to capture peak prices while minimizing shoulder period and off-peak losses. Furthermore, it would measure the extent to which a unit dispatches according to favorable market conditions.
Winners and Losers: Utility Strategy and Shareholder Return
Diversified companies lead (and the globals lag) over the past five years.
The unbundling of services and companies in the electricity and natural gas industries have created unprecedented opportunities to reinvent the traditional integrated utility model, with a broader array of attendant risks and rewards. But this past year was clearly one of retrenchment and strategic soul searching, allowing an opportunity to re-examine the sector for winning business formulas.
Power Measurements
Failing the Market-Power Test:
Power Measurement
Failing the Market-Power Test:
How FERC's ruling could affect wholesale power markets.
Profit Without Costs
An analysis of participant funding in natural gas and electricity markets.
A former FERC chairman asks: Should the cost of transmission infrastructure improvements be rolled-in with the costs shouldered by utility companies and their native customers, even if those customers receive no benefit from the expenditure?
It's Back
Energy trading returns, healthier and wiser.
As the overall market and, in particular, credit ratings begin to improve, will utilities and other energy players jump back into the energy trading market? Only if the return of trading adds real value to a company.
Facing the Death Penalty
Did FERC's market power ruling go too far?
Market-based sales put at risk are the financial lifeblood of some utilities, especially those of the multi-billion-dollar, vertically integrated variety. Those that fail FERC's market-power test will be forced to sell their excess generation at cost-based rates — a "death penalty," according to some utility CEOs.