Capacity Markets and Other Stories of Energy, Policy and Economy

Michael Giberson

Gunnar Birgisson at the Energy Legal Blog provides an update on electric power capacity market developments: No Common Denominator on Capacity Markets. (What? No “common denominator” more than a year and a half after Peter Cramton and Steven Stoft declared, “The Convergence of Market Designs for Adequate Generating Capacity“? As Cramton and Stoft wrote in an earlier paper, “Capacity markets have proven to be one of the most contentious elements of electricity restructuring.”)

Also at Energy Legal Blog, Tracy Davis: “Competing FERC and CFTC Jurisdictional Claims Are Court Bound.”

The Houston Chronicle reports on El Paso Corp. natural gas traders on trial for market manipulation offenses. The NewsWatch: Energy blog explains divergent views of the meaning of book bias, a term that showed up in emails between El Paso’s traders. Energy industry news company (and price index publisher) Platts reported that “Ex-El Paso gas trader says superiors ordered him to lie to Platts.”

Daniel Hall at Common Tragedies and Evans Sparks at his Aviation Policy Blog have been discussing the relative merits of emission fees and other policy options to reduce aircraft emissions.

Corn-based ethanol gets the four-part treatment at The Issue.