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In the article "It may be lights out," Warren Causey suggests agreement with Marty Rosenberg’s article Energy and Presidential Debates by writing that “There are massive problems to be solved in the electric industry, costing massive amounts of money, and with very little time to do it.” Mr. Causey adds that “NERC Chair and CEO said essentially the same thing.”

In a comment to Mr. Causey’s article, Mark Kaminski doesn’t “see any alternative call to arms.” The alternative has been available in Electricity Without Price Controls (EWPC).

EWPC is not just “A faith-in-the-market alternative,” as it has two interacting and balancing markets: a controlled transportation (a compact of the integrated transmission and distribution - the new utility - with a responsibility to transport electricity) market and an open retail and wholesale market. The first is still under price control regulation of tolls, while the second is under prudential regulations.

To get introduced into the alternative anyone should look at the EWPC article Shrinking the Regulator’s Jobs, written under a systemic perspective. To get people to “step up” as Mr. Rosemberg suggest, in my response to Bob Amorosi’s comment to this article, I wrote the following call to arms:

I believe that the media we are sharing [on the energy Central Network] is giving us an emergent unconventional alternative that we need to approach on how to make it happen by telling elective officials what to do, just as other grassroots movement did it in the past in different circumstances. This is also an era of transformation, where leadership is of the utmost importance to resolve the anomaly of the obsolete business model of utilities winning rate cases to regulators, when customers can do it better for themselves if given choice under market competition.

The alternative is a network of engaged global citizens. Eamonn Kelly in his book "Powerful Times: rising to the challenges of our uncertain world," suggests that "Participating together, passionate people will continue to discover and fulfill their potential and exercise their individual and collective power in pursuit of a shared moral purpose."

Kelly adds "we can and must become a 'bigger we.' We have globalized the economy and culture, but we have not yet globalized our sense of ourselves; that lies in our better future... This will not be driven by national governments; it is not how they perceive their role. Neither will it be a priority of businesses small or large, even as they embrace the concept of moral wisdom; it is not their business. In fact, there is only one actor we can expect to promote the growing consciousness of a global self, and that is us: individuals, people, citizens. We have voice, we have passion, we have information, we have unprecedented power, and we have an incredible common stake - only the future of our emergent yet fragile civilization... In the elegant words of the late U.S. President Ronald Reagan, ‘If not us, who? If not now, when?’"

member photo I wrote the following under the article "New Market Signals Are Urgently Needed to Change the Global Warming Threat," by Rafael Herzberg. Please hit link http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article...

Michael,

I will take a step back in the whole series that is jumping to a divisive conclusion. The following is taken and adapted from "Powerful Times" by Eamonn Kelly.

The GHG dilemma can be poised as the question "Should I believe in God," that the philosopher Blaise Pascal reason that he should. GHG is a timed bomb or not. Michael can choose to believe, or not. If GHG is not a timed bomb, and Michael does not believe, Michael is smart - but otherwise there is no great upside. If GHG is not a timed bomb, and Michael believes, Michael is foolish, and may have denied himself some earthly pleasures - unfortunate, but not dreadful. If GHG is a timed bomb and Michael believes, Michael is saved - a fantastic outcome. If GHG is a timed bomb, and Michael does not believe, Michael is doomed - a terrible outcome. Weighing these up, it clearly makes sense for Michael to choose to believe GHG is a timed bomb because the prize for being right is much greater and the cost of being wrong is much more appalling. As evidence mounts of our shared global challenges, I think we will make the same wager as Pascal and choose to take these challenges seriously and address them collaboratively. The prizes awaiting us if we succeed are glittering indeed, as the costs of failure are frightening to contemplate.

Jim,

You assert that "There is no business model in place that allows for such an entity to be incentivized to reduce energy usage. That's a big part of the problem," and I disagree. EWPC is a market architecture and design paradigm shift that enables the development of business model innovations and growth as "Products and services will have incorporated new technologies and fewer materials and they will, therefore, have more value," as Rafael asserts.

In both instances, my suggestion is to transform ourselves in a network of engaged individuals with an invitation to join a Global Citizens' Call to Arms.
# Posted By Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio | 2/26/08 9:18 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo Michael Keller responded on 2.25.08

I'm not sure I follow the Powerful Times logic. Do I think GHG is an imminent catastrophe? No. Is it a major problem? Maybe ... but in the future. Do I think we need to panic? No. Has the planet heated-up and cooled down in the past? Yes, and life has survived.

Is extremely high-priced energy a clear-and-present danger? Yes. Will it crush economies? Yes. Will our children be worse off if we do nothing? Yes.

I think the longer range GHG problem (regardless of whether it's real or not) can be easily addressed as an adjunct to solving the near term crisis - energy.

As to EWPC, I am having trouble understanding how it fosters phase-out of inefficient (and polluting) old generating plants. With no debt, these facilities are cash cows and it's easy to refurbish them (re-tubing old boilers is not hard and is obviously cheaper than building a new plant). How, exactly does EWPC phase them out? Remember, I'm engineer so I have trouble with complicated economic theory.

Call-to-arms? I'm in, where do I enlist?
# Posted By Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio | 2/26/08 9:20 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo Mike,

This is not just for engineers, you need to get out of the box. Get the New York Times Bestseller "Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succed," by Jared Diamond. Maybe it is too late already to stop the collapse process fueled by GHG's.

Todays utilities and regulators are the drivers of the main barrier to progress in the current system. You wrote "Distributed power seems reasonable to me, so does renewable. Technology can cover the intermitency. ..While the big guys might object, they would get little sympathy. That's why they will lose in the end."

You enlist by making the following commitment: under the call to arms, old utilities would get little sympathy by separating the utility grid from the utilitiy enterprise and by getting regulators out price controls of customer's electricity purchases, Regulators retain T&D transportation tolls price controls under a utility compact with a responsibility to transport. EWPC levels the playing field and enables innovations and development of the resources in the demand side on the open market under prudential regulations.
# Posted By Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio | 2/26/08 9:21 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo Edward A. Reid, Jr. responded my last post on 2.26.08

Jose Antonio,

Utilities are creatures of regulation; their managements do what is necessary to succeed profitably within the regulatory environment in which they operate. Changing the utilities can only realistically be accomplished by changing the regulatory environments. This must be done very carefully, to protect the $trillions invested in the current infrastructure by millions of US citizens; and, to protect the financial environment for the incremental investments which will be required to enhance the current infrastructure, so that it can reliably and efficiently gather power from remote, diverse and intermittent sources and deliver it to consumers.

Part of the new "utility compact with responsibility to transport" must be real cost plus profit pricing of service. Utilities cannot be expected to charge the same fee per kWh for transportation of power from 30% available sources as from 90% available sources of the same capacity, since return on investment would differ by a factor of three. Utilities also cannot be expected to bill consumers with on-site generation based on net power consumption, since the utility investment to connect and serve the consumer with generation is at least as high as the cost to connect a consumer without generation.

The most important steps in any process to change the regulatory compact must be a clear and consistent presentation of the new "rules of the game"; and, a clear and consistent presentation of the transition time line. Those steps establish the investment and operating environment for the future; and, they will determine the success or failure of the new regulatory compact.

California 2000 demonstrated quite clearly that new regulatory compacts need not always succeed. There is no need for a national-scale demonstration, just to be sure!
# Posted By Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio | 2/26/08 9:22 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
member photo I am glad that Ed is writing about utility regulation. Unlike Mike (I infer that from his comments), Ed has been aware of EWPC for quite some time. California 1996 (see more below) restructuring kept the demand side closed with "native load" that didn't separate the utility grid from the utility enterprise. California became a de facto worldwide demonstration arising from the mistaken Open Transmission Access instead of the Open (integrated T&D) Transportation Access that is necessary to enable the development of the resources of the demand side with a reduced compact limited to transportation.

The power industry high fragmentation (thousands of utilities in 2000) is one of the sources of opportunity to introduce the communication paradigm of the third industrial revolution, where the demand side is the key to innovations. The utility enterprise side – the state regulated retailer – shifts to the open market under federal (and hopefully worldwide) jurisdiction to enable economies of scale and scope to introduce much needed consolidation. Today´s reality can be understood by a general agreement that "There are massive problems to be solved in the electric industry, costing massive amounts of money, and with very little time to do it," that is giving rise to the Global Citizens' Call to Arms.

The lesson that Dee Hock, CEO Emeritus VISA International, gave us: "Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior. Contrary to today's highly complex rules, resulting from several incremental extensions of the vertically integrated utilities paradigm, the new "rules of the game" are truly simple.

It is well known that price controls are inefficient and lack transparency. Lack of transparency is one side of a coin, the other side being corruption. So the questions are always answered by those that control the political process, as debates get locked, and to get them unlocked the hierarchical force of the authorities is employed. Please read Slicing the Last of the Regulated Monopolies to learn more about how the California debate led the wrong way.Electricity Without Price Controls is a market architecture and design paradigm shift away from the VIUs paradigm based on "simple, clear purpose and principles," as can be seen in the article Synthesis Proposal Agreement of EWPC. Under EWPC, questions are answered without getting into debates.
# Posted By Jose Antonio Vanderhorst-Silverio | 2/26/08 9:23 AM | Report This Comment as Foul/Inappropriate
 
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