September 2009 Archives

By most accounts, diplomatic relations between the US and Canada have warmed since Barack Obama was elected president. But in one specific area that could have a profound impact on US energy supply, the two countries are further apart than ever.

This week, on a visit to Washington, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper reiterated Canada's position that it will not allow liquefied natural gas tankers to pass through Head Harbour Passage on their way to proposed LNG import terminals in Maine. That proclamation came just two days after Maine Governor John Baldacci, during a visit to New Brunswick, said the Canadian government was taking too hard a hard line with respect to Head Harbour. "It just seems like this is being done more on emotions and local politics," he told a local newspaper.

Uncertainty is a dirty word in the world of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, where 2012 carbon allowance prices have sunk over the past year as buyers and sellers wait for Congress to decide how to value them in a federal cap-and-trade scheme.

Detailing the results of the RGGI market's fifth allowance auction this month, RGGI administrators said that 2012 allowance prices were just a cent above the auction clearing price of $1.86/short ton. In comparison, the first auction of 2012 allowances, held in March, saw $3.05/st.

Different people do different things with the "epiphanies" they have while working for giant corporations. Some cast off the golden handcuffs and sail around the world. Others, like John Hofmeister, take on causes related to their work, and campaign for things they couldn't take on while employed. And pursue big thoughts, like a Federal Energy Resources Board.

Hofmeister was president of Shell until last year, when he left to found Citizens for Affordable Energy, which has a wide-ranging array of interests, with a theme that appears to be: What America needs is a comprehensive energy policy.

Speaking Tuesday at a meeting in Greenwich, Connecticut, he called for an energy equivalent of the Federal Reserve to manage energy and energy infrastructure needs, including new supply, technology, carbon management and power transmission.

Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney general, seems fairly certain that a 2nd Circuit US Court of Appeals ruling Monday is a big boost for those who want federal controls on coal-fired power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. With the carbon cap-and-trade bill facing formidable opposition in the Senate, proponents might well embrace anything that could nudge antagonists in the measure's direction.

"My hope is that the court case will provide a powerful incentive for polluters to be reasonable and come to the table and seek affordable and reasonable reductions," he told our colleague Brian Hansen. No matter what, though, Blumenthal said, "the courts are ultimately going to order the companies to stop this harm to our states."

The appeals court ruling rejected a federal district court decision that had turned down the effort by environmental groups, Connecticut and others to convict American Electric Power and other big coal-burning utilities of creating a public nuisance with their emissions. Asthma, heat-related illnesses and other harms are a result, was the argument by Connecticut, New York, California and others. Even Iowa.

Pacific Gas and Electric is the classic, longtime "clean" utility -- almost no pollutant emissions. It just this week pulled out of the US Chamber of Commerce because of the chamber's tough skepticism about the need to regulate carbon emissions. But clearly, CEO Peter Darbee doesn't see company cleanness as any guarantee of future viability of a power utility.

Speaking at the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch utility conference in New York Tuesday, Darbee said climate change and renewable energy mandates are not the big challenges for the power industry. Instead, our correspondent Ethan Howland reports, he said distributed energy and smart meters present the much bigger threat to a business's way of life.

America's Natural Gas Alliance's effort to push its agenda into the national climate-change debate was launched Thursday, and with it came the question: "Why? Aren't there other gas industry advocates lobbying Congress now?"

Sure there are, acknowledged Jim Hackett, chairman and CEO of Anadarko Petroleum. But at a Washington press briefing Thursday, he explained that he and the other CEOs who formed ANGA "don't see any conflict at all. We are all members of almost all if not all of these organizations. It's not a question of them vs. us."

A group of transmission facilities that could be built on a "no regrets" basis: This is one of the things the government will look for from the planning efforts it is going to fund after examining groups' applications for federal stimulus money. Seeking "a common chord somewhere" is how Department of Energy senior adviser David Meyer described it this week at Platts' Transmission Planning & Development Forum.

But he also reminded people that DOE's funding for interconnection-wide planning groups is just a beginning. "I certainly hope that we all understand" that, he said. "The assumption here is that iterative long-term interconnection-level analyses are going to be needed as far as we can see in terms of our professional lifetimes." And that's likely to apply whether one's professional life has only a few years to go or is just in its adolescence. Unless something volcanic happens. 

One of the best ways to understand the difference between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's "principles-based" regulations and the Securities and Exchange Commission's "rules-based" governance is simply to attend a public meeting held at each of their respective headquarters.

Principles-based oversight, such as the CFTC's Commodity Exchange Act, is conceptual, offering a set of guidelines that may not be applicable in every situation. The SEC's rules-based oversight, however, is defined by a set of rules that must be strictly adhered to, virtually all the time.

Keeping this in mind, when one attends a public meeting at the CFTC, one simply walks through a revolving door, signs in and mingles with commissioners, speakers and public alike. The atmopshere is easygoing at the breaks, but all business when the time comes to begin. .

As a group called All-4-One used to wonder in the 1990s, "Could This Be Magic?"

A federal program intended to give out money, and that actually gives out money. Fast. And there is more where that came from, as much as qualified people ask for.

This is the money that Iberdrola Renewables, Horizon Wind Energy and others are receiving from the departments of Energy and Treasury - a total of about $500 million was just announced this week. Horizon told our colleague Jeff Ryser that it had only filed its actual application last week. And it expected to have the cash deposited in its account - about $50 million - within just a few days.