Michael Giberson
More than a month has gone by since the one-year anniversary of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which means that the final report to Congress of the five member inter-agency Electric Energy Market Competition Task Force is more than a month past due. The task force, composed of staffers from the Department of Justice, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture, was due to deliver to Congress a report on competition in wholesale and retail markets for electricity in the United States.
Normally such a lapse would be of little interest to any but a select few, and maybe that’s the case here, too. But in this case, because Lynne and I wrote a comment on the draft released in June, I’ve been looking for the final version. With five agencies to approve the final product before it goes to Congress, likely it is held up by a senior administrator at one of the agencies who has some minor quibble with the penultimate draft. I don’t know which agency (or agencies) is responsible for the delay, but if you care to traffic in facts and/or rumor please feel free to comment.
For more background, see our posts with an initial note on the draft report, a fuller description, and a discussion of some of the other comments filed in response to the draft. You can join me in the EEMCTF Final Report Watch by occasionally checking here (FERC) or here (DOJ) or here (DOE) or here (Ag) or here (FTC).
Mike,
I suspect some of the delay may be the result of an unwillingness to candidly acknowledge that government, at all levels, is part of the problem; and, to acknowledge that further government action may not result in (and might even impede) a solution.
I suspect, for example, that the MD legislature does not acknowledge that rate caps were a cause of the current problem in the MD electricity “market”. It is obvious, as D.O.U.G. stated in his comment to a previous post, that CA officials do not acknowledge their culpability in the CA fiasco. Legislatures also do not see the inherent conflict between renewable portfolio standards and grid reliability, although the pending second CA fiasco my help illustrate the conflict on a grand scale. (This past summer’s problems apparently were not sufficient to do so.)
Oh Jeez, Ed, this has to be at least the third or fourth CA fiasco that is pending. Remember BRPU and SO4? 😉
Oh Jeez, Ed, this has to be at least the third or fourth CA fiasco that is pending. Remember BRPU and SO4? 😉
Oh Jeez, Ed, this has to be at least the third or fourth CA fiasco that is pending. Remember BRPU and SO4? 😉
Oh Jeez, Ed, this has to be at least the third or fourth CA fiasco that is pending. Remember BRPU and SO4? 😉
D.O.U.G.,
What’s one pending fiasco, more or less? 🙂
Ed (D.O.U.G. 2)