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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (4097)	8/16/2003 10:37:42 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 10965

The illuminating blackout They were sudden and shocking even though they were decades in the making. While the District avoided the power outages that briefly threw 50 million Americans into darkness, Washington's policy-makers will have a large role in resolving the long-term energy policy challenges illuminated by the blackouts. No one is yet certain of the actual cause of the event, and tracing the exact sequence to the initial failure will likely take experts some time. That the District faced no outages was a tribute to both the power grid safety equipment installed by the regional grid coordinator and pre-event planning by D.C. officials. According to Peter G. LaPorte, the director of the D.C. Emergency Management Agency, his team had gone though a power-outage exercise just last week. There are two broad challenges on the national level: one of power generation; the other of power transmission. A critical transmission issue is the incomplete interconnectedness of the electrical infrastructure. The nation is currently divided into several regional power grids. Transactions between those grids are limited, a consequence of both the structural bottlenecks and the financial differences between them — regional grids with excess capacity are understandably uneager to accept the financial penalties they would face by becoming part of a national grid. The challenges are somewhat analogous to those faced by the telecommunications and airline industries. All three have moved toward deregulation, but none has yet made it to the point where market forces have sufficient freedom for product innovation, consistent service and cost-savings. Legitimate energy-trading companies are a step in the right direction of deregulation. Unfortunately, the actions of some Enron executives so tainted the process that we fear it will be a long time before investors are inclined to put resources in that direction, or policy-makers are willing to take the risky step of endorsing such enterprises. Meanwhile, far too little new power generation has come on line, partially out of NIMBY-ism and partially from a misguided environmental ethos. While no one likes seeing inky smoke clouding a pristine blue sky or power transmission towers rising over one's property, the nation needs more power and modernized electrical transmission. In the future, new energy generation will be needed from new nuclear reactors, additional natural gas generators and next-generation coal power plants among others. To its credit, the Bush administration recognized the nation's electricity generation and transmission difficulties early. In its report issued in May 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group called upon the president to "direct the appropriate federal agencies to take actions to remove constraints on the interstate transmission grid and allow our nation's electricity supply to meet the growing needs of our economy." To that end, the House inserted language into its energy bill which will open access to the electrical grid, repeal the Public Utility Holding Company Act and ease electricity transportation from areas with excess capacity to areas with reduced capacity. While the Senate-passed bill contains some of the same reforms, it would also further splinter the grid system, according to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. When Congress returns to work on the energy bill, it must find ways to continue to free the market forces that will economically modernize the electrical grid and ensure uninterrupted power supplies, even while averting potential abuses. Doing so will not be easy, but it will be necessary, as Thursday's illuminating blackout aptly demonstrated.