Pass the word: the starch is back in town.
Date: Friday, February 15, 2002 @ 22:50:00 UTC
Topic: General


Source: The New York Times, 10 February 2002 (extracts):

Pass the word: the starch is back in town. Government, which was, at least in theory, supposed to be exiting stage right as deregulation proceeded, is instead assuming in many ways a more central role than ever in how energy in New York - and other states as well, notably California - gets made, distributed and sold...



But the frontier mentality is also on the run for reasons that go deeper than mere megawatts. The terrorist attack in September, state officials said, reinforced as never before the connection between energy dependability and energy security, which they say must be the government`s province. Protecting the system - through measures like diversification of fuel supplies - has become a major element in the state energy plan being completed this spring...

``The Enron mantra that government can screw up anything it touches and markets are superior - this argument no longer has any credibility whatsoever,`` said William Hogan, a professor of public policy and administration at Harvard`s Kennedy School of Government, who is a leading authority on electricity regulation. ``If you stand up after Enron and 9/11 and say something like that, people look at you like you`re crazy,`` he said.

New York State will need 7,300 megawatts of new power supply over the next five years, he said, but the money and the will must be committed now...

Because utilities like Consolidated Edison, which serves New York City and its northern suburbs, make their profits by moving as much energy through their wires as they can, they have no interest - or at best a conflicted interest - in having their customers using less electricity through steps like conservation.

Under the old regulated system, by contrast, utilities were rewarded for reducing demand. Now the state discourages conservation with one hand and encourages it with the other, the critics say. The result might look like smart government, but it depends on your point of view.
``We still don`t have a good long-term strategy, or even a medium-term strategy,`` said Ashok Gupta, a senior energy economist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a New York-based conservation group. ``We have ideology followed by crisis management, but no strategy.``





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