Website Picks
Fall 2002
Consumers Union
www.consumersunion.org
This consumers group, publisher of Consumer Reports, has an active advocacy
program focusing on utility deregulation issues in California and Texas. It maintains
regional offices in those two states, along with its Washington, D.C. office, where
advocates testify before Congress, legislatures, and federal and state regulatory
agencies, and, on occasion, file lawsuits on behalf of consumer interests.
The group's most recent work on deregulation issues has focused on the Pacific Gas and
Electric bankruptcy proceedings in California and the evolution and effects of electric
deregulation in Texas. After doing a financial analysis of the PG&E bankruptcy plan,
the CU office in San Francisco objected to an arrangement that would allow the company to
pull its valuable generation assets out of state regulation by forming new subsidiaries;
the subsidiaries would then charge the utility and its ratepayers higher rates to pay off
creditors. The bankruptcy judge in charge of the PG&E case ruled against that portion
of the bankruptcy plan.
The CU office in Austin released a detailed report on the suppliers and rates available
since deregulation began in some areas of Texas on January 1. The report helps consumers
decipher company offers -- some, for example, didn't include their monthly service charge
in their rate offers. The report also analyzes the fine print in electric supplier offers:
prices that may change from month to month, monthly service charges that change during the
higher-rate summer months, fees for late payment and/or to cancel service, etc.
These and other reports on utility deregulation are available at the CU website.
Website visitors can also sign up for a free weekly update on CU advocacy issues.
Energy Central
http://www.energycentral.com/sections/newsroom/
-- Consumer Advocacy Agency Sues Texas Utility Panel to Cut Electricity Rates
-- Virginia Survey Says 40 Percent Now Aware of Electricity Deregulation
-- Utility regulator says consumers will have more choices for less
-- Pacific Gas & Electric's Parent Files Revised Plan to Get Out of Bankruptcy
-- Enron's Annual Report Didn't Make It Easy to Spot Disturbing Signs
These are a few of the headlines from Energy Central's daily news updates on the energy
industry. The Energy Central website provides daily news summaries on deregulation,
mergers and acquisitions, rates, international news, renewables, investor news, job news
and conferences for both the electric and natural gas industries. Membership is free to
individuals working in the electric power industry, which includes utilities, marketers,
publisher, vendors, law firms, researchers, consultants, financiers or other related
categories.
Fisher, Sheehan and Colton
http://www.fsconline.com/work/ur/eratlic/eraltic.htm
Fisher, Sheehan and Colton is a law and economics research and consulting firm that has
done considerable work on utility restructuring and its effects on residential consumers,
particularly low-income. Its website is a treasure trove of consumer information, with
downloadable papers on topics such as:
Aggregation -- low-income gas/electric customers
Arrears -- deferred payment plans
Consumer education -- electric/gas restructuring
Electric restructuring -- measuring impacts on low-income
LIHEAP -- integration with system benefit charge programs
Mergers, electric -- sharing the savings with low-income customers
Outreach for fuel assistance
Prepayment meters
Winter shut-off moratorium
Some of these papers can be quite extensive. For example, FSC has prepared a 15-part
series presenting two and three page summaries of electric restructuring issues. These
summaries consider issues ranging from impacts on consumer protection and service quality,
to the pros and cons of "stranded cost" recovery.
The law firm also engages in empirical research unrelated to particular litigation.
This research may be supported by a particular client interested in discovering an answer
or documenting a need. For example, the Electric Advisory Panel of the Colorado General
Assembly hired FSC to prepare a detailed discussion of the impact that restructuring the
electric power industry would have on prices and service quality to low-income consumers.
In another instance, FSC completed a study of Missouri Head Start families relating to how
unaffordable home energy bills affected the educational attainment of low-income students.
The FSC website also features a
bimonthly newsletter on restructuring consumer issues.
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts
http://www.csa.com/hottopics/ern/01dec/overview.html
Discussions of electric restructuring usually revolve around individual state
restructuring plans -- rate caps, default and standard offer rate plans, how to encourage
competition yet limit market manipulation, provisions for low-income consumers, energy
efficiency programs, etc. In-depth analyses of the national basis for and implications of
energy deregulation -- national laws and regulation, effects on national energy efficiency
and air pollution control programs -- are harder to find.
Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, a private company, sponsors reviews of four to ten
environmental policy issues each year, all based on Congressional Research Service papers.
In December 2001, the company released Electricity Efficiency and Deregulation, an
overview and assemblage of the three CRS reports: 1) Electricity, the Road Toward
Restructuring, 2) Energy Efficiency: Budget, Oil Conservation and Electricity Conservation
Issues, and 3) Energy Efficiency and the Rebound Effect: Does Increasing Efficiency
Decrease Demand?
The papers review all of the federal legislation and agency orders that allowed the
introduction of retail electric competition in individual states, along with current
proposals to modify that legislation to strengthen or weaken federal overview of the
energy business. Also presented are the fate of the 27 bills affecting restructuring,
energy efficiency, low-income weatherization, and renewable energy in the 106th
Congress (2000-01) and a brief description of the 40 energy-related bills introduced in
the 107th Congress (2001-02). The papers include statistics on proposed FY 2002
budgets for energy efficiency programs in the Department of Energy and the Environmental
Protection Agency, and how they compare to FY 2001 budgets.
Although the papers are very detailed, they are not very technical and thus provide a
good introduction to national restructuring issues and legislation for the average reader.
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