Politics

Power Play: News Series Examines Texas Electric Power Industry Restructuring

2 Comments / Electricity, Politics / By

Michael Giberson Marty Schladen, a reporter for The Daily News out of Galveston, Texas, has a four-part series on the state’s electric power restructuring. I’ve only just read the third article which offers a thumbnail sketch of the career of Samuel Insull (with unusual depth and context for a newspaper article): Insull revolutionized the electricity …

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Economists Do Not Understand the Opposition to Congestion Pricing

9 Comments / Economics, Networks, Politics, Telecom / By

Michael Giberson A few recent news articles on congestion has Peter Klein at Organization and Markets asking, “Why the Resistance to Pricing?” When the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied — causing shortages, delays, congestion, misallocation — the solution is to raise the price. Every freshman economics student knows this. Why, then, are regulators, industry …

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Airlines Prefer Customers Take Delay Risks Rather Than Face Market Mechanisms to Allocate Capacity at Jfk, Other Congested Airports

5 Comments / Networks, Politics, Travel / By

Michael Giberson A New York Times article reports on negotiations initiated by the U.S. Department of Transportation seeking to get airlines to voluntarily give up landing slots at Kennedy Airport, one of the nation’s most congested airports. (Many other stories on this topic are available.) After a pep talk by the secretary of transportation, Mary …

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News Story Blames Inadequate Regulation for Excess Commodity Speculation, Trading Losses, Higher Energy Bills

13 Comments / Energy markets, Politics / By

Michael Giberson The Sunday Washington Post carried a front page story on the “slight oversight” of energy trading. Here’s the lede: One year ago, a 32-year-old trader at a giant hedge fund named Amaranth held huge sway over the price the country paid for natural gas. Trading on unregulated commodity exchanges, he made risky bets …

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Case Involving Unilateral Modification to Power Contracts Heading to Supreme Court

2 Comments / Electricity, Energy markets, Politics / By

Michael Giberson Tracy Davis, writing at Energy Legal Blog, takes note of the Supreme Court’s decision to take on a pair of Ninth Circuit court decisions: In a pair of decisions issued last December, Public Utility District No. 1 of Snohomish County, WA v. FERC and California Public Utilities Commission v. FERC, the Ninth Circuit …

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Nuclear Energy’s Rebirth: Good Economics, Some Environmental Credentials, and Great Subsidies

1 Comment / Electricity, Environmental policy, Politics / By

Michael Giberson It seems I may have left off a critical point in my comment on regulation and the apparent rebirth of nuclear power. Following the insightful commentary in Loren Steffy’s column in the Houston Chronicle, I highlighted that in many cases stockholders would assume the risks of cost overruns or poor performance, rather than …

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Arizona Commission’s Negative Power Line, Round Ii

1 Comment / Electricity, Politics / By

Michael Giberson A few months ago I posted notice here of the Arizona Corporation Commission’s decision to reject a proposed powerline from the middle of Arizona into southern California. Commissioners were saying things like they refused to “hurt Arizona utility customers to benefit Californians” and opposed the idea of becoming “an energy farm for California.” …

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Unbundling Europe’s Electric Utilities

5 Comments / Electricity, Energy markets, Politics / By

Michael Giberson A great deal of energy is currently being expended in Europe debating the merits of further unbundling of vertically-integrated electric utilities in the EU. “This is unfortunate,” said Jean-Michel Glachant and François Lévêque, in a post on the EU Energy Policy Blog, on two grounds. First, because the economics of the matter are …

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Nuclear Power and the Death of Regulation (and the Rebirth of Nuclear Power)

3 Comments / Electricity, Politics / By

Michael Giberson Earlier this week, NRG Energy filed an application to build two new nuclear power plants adjacent to the existing South Texas Project (STP) plants. It is the first such application submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in nearly 30 years. Loren Steffy, business columnist at the Houston Chronicle, appreciates the subtle irony in …

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Adler: Government-sponsored Prizes Would Be Better Than Subsidies

Energy markets, Liberty, Politics / By

Michael Giberson “Direct government subsidies are a particularly poor way to encourage innovation,” writes Jonathan Adler in an article asserting that government-sponsored prizes would be better than subsidies at encouraging the development of low-carbon-emission energy technologies. Government subsidies tend to be dispersed on political criteria, rewarding large, politically connected incumbent firms, rather than innovative upstarts. …

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