> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Mr. Richardson, who has been
> barnstorming the country warning of the shortages, is now pushing the
> idea of deregulation legislation at the federal level and the
> creation of a kind of uber-regulator to oversee a cohesive national
> energy policy. In the interest of harmony, Mr. Richardson is
> proposing that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission take the
> lead, stripping away some powers from state legislators.
>
> That doesn't sound like a bad idea to Oracle's Mr. Byron. "The
> digital economy depends on uninterrupted supplies of the
> highest-quality electricity," he says. "Something has got to be done."
The irony of course is that the Internet economy is in ways responsible for the national problem, since it was only through the networking of energy-exchange information that national wholesale sales and distribution of electricity became possible.
And the undermining of state regulation has led to the problems documented in both the solidity of the electicity grid and the breakdown in regional planning for electricity supplies.
So the solution is? Further disempower state regulators through national legislation, with the hope that FERC actually does something to make up for the problems it created in the first phases of disabling local regulation.
I have a chunk of information on this process from my Ph.D. research; since I may be doing a reedit soon, I'd be interested in anyone's responses. The section is called "Electrifying the Internet : The Marketization of Electric Utility Networks" and is at:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~newman/chap5.html#g
Any responses are welcome:
-- Nathan Newman