Utility News

Forbes:

With federal regulators deadlocked on what may prove to be the largest telecommunications merger in history, news about progress on the deal has become scarce and highly coveted.

So the small group of clients of Banc of America Securities LLC were privileged Wednesday to get an exclusive briefing from top-ranking staff of the Federal Communications Commission at hotel a block away from agency headquarters.

The meeting was described as “timely” in a brief item in Communications Daily, the telecommunications industry newsletter, with “topics including the AT&T/BellSouth merger and net neutrality pending at the Commission.”

The meeting, however, was not open to the public or the media - it was for Banc of America “clients only…”

The FCC has been criticized in the past by public interest groups for its cozy relationship with industry, and Wednesday’s episode was particularly disturbing, said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president and CEO of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm.

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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Parties formally challenging the pending merger of Duquesne Light Co. into the Australia-based Macquarie Consortium have until Dec. 21 to submit testimony, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission said Tuesday. The half-dozen complainant groups, including small-business and consumer advocates, then may present and cross-examine expert witnesses during hearings in Harrisburg before Administrative Law Judge Robert Meehan on Jan. 30, 31 and Feb. 1. The judge’s initial decision on the proposed merger is expected in early April, said PUC press secretary Jennifer Kocher.

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MarketWatch:

January natural gas was last up 32.1 cents, or 3.8%, to $8.88 per million British thermal units, finding support from forecasts for colder weather in much of the U.S. as well as strength in crude-futures prices. January natural gas touched a high of $8.94, its strongest intraday level since Sept. 14. January crude was up $1.11 at $62.10 a barrel following a more than two-week high of $62.35.

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The New Haven Independent:

While most people headed home for the holidays on Thanksgiving Eve last Wednesday, United Illuminating — at the end of the work day — released the details of the rate increases it’s seeking from state regulators as of Jan. 1. The utility, which sends electricity to 300,000 customers in Greater New Haven and Bridgeport, wants to raise rates for residential customers an average of 38 percent, for businesses, an average of 50 percent.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal called the proposed hike a “tsunami.”

But it seems likely that state regulators, at the Department of Public Utility Control, will approve the request when they meet on Dec. 8.

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The New York Times:

Under state rate regulation, utilities are compensated for producing energy, but rarely for conserving it. A few states, notably California, allow electric companies to pass through the costs of energy-saving programs, but they are the exceptions.

“With changes in state regulation, we could really stimulate energy efficiency,” said James E. Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy, a big utility in the Midwest and Southeast.

Energy-saving investments, Mr. Rogers said, would include on-site visits by experts to advise consumers on how to make their homes more energy efficient; pass-through subsidies for the purchase of fluorescent light bulbs; and sophisticated network technology to manage energy use remotely during periods of peak demand.

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The Globe & Mail:

In the last three years, U.S.-based water companies — as measured by the Bloomberg U.S. water index — have surged 150 per cent, three times the rise seen by companies on the S&P 500, while paying twice as much in dividends. International water players are doing even better…, with their stock values rising twice as fast as their American counterparts in the past year alone.

Water is an attractive investment because it is much less volatile than industries driven by economic cycles… Companies that specialize in “water solutions” can range from pumps, pipes and valves, wastewater treatment, to quality testing. European companies account for half of the global water players, while American companies make up 36 per cent.

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AP via Boston.com:

A New Jersey-based power company has scrapped plans for a power plant using “clean coal” technology, but is moving ahead with a conventional gas-fired plant to produce electricity.

NRG has canceled plans to build the $1.6 billion power plant in Montville using the coal technology, Ray Long, Northeast region director for the company, said Monday.

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Forbes:

The case, Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, stems from the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the 1980s and 1990s, with some experts citing it as the most important antitrust case to reach the Supreme Court in 20 years.

The case involves a 2003 lawsuit on behalf of William Twombly and all individuals in the continental United States who bought local telephone and Internet service between February 1996 and the present.

The suit alleged that the incumbent local telephone companies, or “Baby Bells,” illegally conspired to prevent competition by excluding new local phone companies from their territories and agreeing not to compete against each other in each other’s markets.

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AP via Hartford Courant:

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal says “nothing less than the survival of the Earth as we know it” is at stake.

The claim might sound comically exaggerated, except that the case is the first about global warming to reach the nation’s highest court.

Massachusetts vs. EPA aims to have greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, regulated as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The case is being brought by a coalition of states, including Connecticut, and some of the highest-profile environmental groups in the country.

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The New York Times:

A FEDERAL agency’s finding that the proposed Broadwater Energy floating gas plant in Long Island Sound was needed and would have “limited adverse environmental impacts” has moved the plant closer to approval, but opponents of the project in New York and Connecticut continued to criticize it.

Broadwater, a partnership of the Shell Oil Company and the TransCanada Corporation, said that the finding, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, was a significant advance for the $700 million project, which the company wants to put in operation by 2010. The platform, which would be moored in eastern Long Island Sound about 9 miles from Long Island and 11 miles from Connecticut, would be a terminal for liquefied natural gas.

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