The head of a Gas Industry Standards Board (GISB) task forcethat’s exploring the feasibility of the organization gettinginvolved in creating standards for retail electric and natural gas,as well as for wholesale power, personally believes a newstandards-setting group should be formed to undertake the task.

“We’re not talking about taking a GISB charter and just making afew changes in it…..What we’re talking about is getting a roomfulof people that represent both the gas and the electric [industriestogether]…..and then you’d sit down and everything would be upfor grabs. You’d in effect form a new organization,” said James R.Templeton, also a GISB board member, at the third industry-widemeeting exploring the issue last Wednesday.

“There may be some very good reasons why [we’d] use GISB’spresent certificate to get [this task] done. But it won’t then becalled GISB,” he noted, adding that instead it possibly would bere-named the Energy Industry Standards Board (EISB). Many of GISB’sprinciples, however, would be part of the new group —independence, openness, its voluntary nature and balanced interests”so that nobody’s ox can be gored.”

But GISB “has not yet determined that it will jump into thisbriar patch,” said Templeton, principal of Houston-basedComprehensive Energy Services Inc. Before it can proceed in thisdirection, it will need the broad support of the gas and electricindustries, greater financial backing and more volunteers fromenergy companies.

Also, a key issue to be considered is whether “common standards[can] be applied to both the gas and electric industry, or are theyjust too different,” said Jerry Langdon, a former FERCCommissioner. He noted the question has dogged the Commission foryears.

Templeton’s task force was formed in response to a request bythe Coalition for Uniform Business Rules (CUBR) last September forGISB to explore developing retail standards for natural gas andelectricity. GISB “actively took up the charge,” and addedwholesale electricity to the list. GISB, whose focus to date hasbeen on developing standards for wholesale gas, has the authorityto establish retail gas standards as well, but standards for retailand wholesale electricity are outside of its scope.

When it put the request to GISB, CUBR “didn’t envision GISBdoing this solely by themselves,” said an official with ReliantEnergy, which belongs to CUBR. Rather, it saw GISB as a”facilitator or coordinator” of a collaborative process in whichall market segments would band together to form a gas and electricenergy standards board, he noted.

In a gesture of conciliation, the Edison Electric Institute(EEI) said it will meet with GISB board members within the next fewweeks in an effort to bring more electric utilities andelectric-related companies into the debate over whether standardsshould be established for retail and wholesale electricity and, ifso, by whom.

Michael McGrath, EEI’s group director of energy services, agreedto the meeting after a handful of electric representatives whoattended the industry-wide meeting expressed concern that a gasstandards-setting group, which currently has only minor electricrepresentation, might be in charge of creating standards for theelectric industry.

“I think the challenge has been made to EEI to come and visitwith GISB…..and talk about how we might proceed. We acceptthat…..We have already assembled a board level team to work thatissue,” McGrath said.

Templeton and other GISB members tried to assuage the concernsof the electric representatives at the meeting. “We’re not tryingto jump in and tell a very large part of the U.S. economy how torun its business,” he noted. There’s no one at GISB who believesthe group alone will “decide how and who and when…..to doelectric standards and then foist them on the electric industry,”said Jim Buccigross, chairman of GISB’s executive committee anddirector and general counsel for the National Registry of CapacityRights.

Some gas members of GISB were hesitant as well about the groupbecoming involved with electric standards, saying they feared thatgas interests might be overlooked in the event GISB assumed thisresponsibility. At GISB, the “plate is pretty full with the gasagenda. So clearly what will not work is if current GISB membersend up doing the work” for the electric industry, said arepresentative of Williams.

The issue, he said, boils down to whether the electric industryparticipants feel the GISB model “is the most efficient andeffective way to move forward with establishing standards, orshould it be a mere image organization? In other words, rather thanreformulating GISB, do something different. Do [they] feel it’smost effective to have their own organization, but adopt the sameprocess [and] procedures” of GISB?

The new standards-setting organization, if formed, would proposeand adopt voluntary standards for the electronic exchange ofinformation, record and data formats, communication protocols andrelated business practices that would streamline the transactionalprocesses of both the electric and natural gas businesses,including retail and wholesale, said Templeton.

Susan Parker

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