The heat wave and attendant electric and gas price spikes ofearly May have lit a fire under federal legislators, who may haveto answer to consumers this summer and constituents this fall as towhy the nation’s partially deregulated power industry isn’tworking.

The Senate Energy Committee held its first mark-up session lastWednesday and promised some votes this coming Wednesday on S. 2098,the Electric Power Market Competition and Reliability Act. In theHouse the Commerce Committee promised to start marking up itsversion, the Electricity Competition and Reliability Act, H.R.2944, June 14.

Both chambers have been considering — but failing to act on— proposed legislation for the last four years. The partialderegulation that has ensued and uncertainty as to the rules of thegame going forward has been blamed for the failure of the electricpower industry to grow to meet increasing demand.

Attempting to head off a movement toward a stopgap “reliability”measure rather than comprehensive legislation, Senate EnergyChairman Frank Murkowski, (R-AK), warned his colleagues last week,”nothing we enact will alleviate any reliability problems we willface this summer and next winter. Our existing generationcapability and transmission capacity are what they are. Nothingthat can be done by legislation will alter that in the near-term.”The chairman said he supports “a comprehensive bill that willaddress reliability.”

In last week’s session Murkowski attempted to sound outcommittee members on a long list of controversial issues, includingthe federal versus state role in oversight of a restructuredindustry, mandatory RTOs, transmission expansion and construction,retail reciprocity, and repeal of existing laws regulating publicutilities. He said the committee would begin voting on provisionsto be included this week.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) said at the beginning of last week’ssession that committee members had made “substantial progress” onreliability issues and there appeared to be “a consensus on thecommittee and the utility industry” behind the proposals in a billintroduced by Sen. Slade Gorton, (R-WA) and co-sponsored byBingaman and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM). The bill would create anew, national reliability organization to set the rules for thenational transmission grid. “I hope we can report Gorton’s bill(the Electric Reliability

2000 Act, S.2071) before we begin experiencing problems thissummer,” Bingaman said.

Sen. Craig Thomas (R-WY) said the committee should either pass”a regulatory” measure to deal with reliability, without loading onany other issues, or a comprehensive bill.

Ellen Beswick

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