Power breakdowns this summer could spur Congress to act onelectric restructuring legislation, but crisis legislation in anelection year could do more harm than good, two political expertstold GasMart/Power 2000 attendees yesterday.

Legislation triggered by power outages “will be a politicalevent,” said John Anderson, executive director of the ElectricityConsumers Resource Council (ELCON), representing large industrialusers. “It will not be good politics. It will be crisis legislationand you won’t like the results.” Charles Linderman, director offossil fuels and renewable programs for the Edison ElectricInstitute, agreed, pointing out that nothing Congress could dowould immediately remedy any power reliability problems.

Linderman said any restructuring legislation would likelyinclude severe environmental provisions, further restricting theuse of coal-fired plants. In addition environmentalists are pushingfor mandates for use of renewable resources to generate up to 25%of the nation’s power supply by 2015, he added.

For the long term, the federal government will have to act to”eliminate barriers to large, inclusive, seamless, trulycompetitive electricity markets,” Anderson said. He pointed outthat even states that are making progress toward a competitivepower market are going in different directions, creating barriersto a true market. In addition, vertically integrated entrenchedutilities are failing to provide services large industrials havecome to expect. Power customers are seeing technological innovationspur competition and cut costs in other industries. “Thetechnologically-challenged electric industry cannot survive.”

Linderman also focused on technology, pointing out that newgeneration and efficiencies contributed by combined cyclegeneration and distributed generation provided by micro-turbinesand fuel cells did not require legislation for their development.He stressed the increased use of natural gas as a default fuel fordeclining hydro-electric power in the Pacific Northwest, for coalplants that cannot meet emission standards and for higher-pricedoil. Of the 30 GW of new capacity expected to go online this year28.8 GW is gas-fired, Linderman said.

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