Boon

In what one gas industry official close to the case called a”major victory,” the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appealsupheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s program for reducingnitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions for 19 eastern and midwestern statesplus the District of Columbia last week. Barring any furtherappeals, the NOx SIP Call rule will be added to the Clean Air Act,requiring the states included in it to reduce their NOx emissionsby a total of 1.2 million tons, or 28% of current levels, annually.

Distributed generation and mandates of the Kyoto protocol couldmean great things for gas demand and are reason enough to make theindustry super bullish, according to the Edison ElectricInstitute’s (EEI) Charles Linderman, director of fossil fuels,renewable energy and rail policy.

Distributed generation is poised to get a boost from the GasResearch Institute (GRI) and Architectural Energy Corp., which havedeveloped new software to evaluate the economic viability ofon-site distributed generation projects for utility customers.

In the view of Enron CEO Kenneth L. Lay, deregulation andtechnological advances will be a boon to consumers and also naturalgas. As completion creates greater incentives for boostingefficiency, particularly with regard to power regulation, naturalgas stands to benefit. Lay pointed out combined-cycle generation,especially that fired by natural gas, accounts for 60% of total newinstalled generation capacity in the United States since 1991.