IndianaDG

CAC Asks: Is IURC silence on Duke/Progress Merger Lack of Jurisdiction or Lack of Transparency?

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 22, 2011 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

NEWS RELEASE from Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana

For Immediate Release Contact: Kerwin Olson (317) 735-7727

August 22, 2011

Today, in a letter to Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission Chairman James Atterholt, the Citizens Action Coalition raised concerns with respect to the Commission’s apparent lack of engagement to date, at least publicly, in the proposed merger between Duke Energy and Progress Energy. CAC also submitted a public information request seeking any communications regarding the proposed merger between and among officials of both Duke Energy and Progress Energy with the IURC and other State agencies.

“We find it difficult to understand why the Commission has not already begun a public investigation into the consequences of this proposed merger on the customers of Duke Energy Indiana,” stated Kerwin Olson, Interim Executive Director of CAC. “Especially considering the recent behavior of Duke Energy not only with inappropriate communications with the Commission, but also with the gross mis-management of the problem plagued Edwardsport IGCC.”

Duke Energy and Progress Energy are positioned to become the nation’s largest electric utility later this year. Shareholders of the two companies are scheduled to vote on the deal tomorrow, August 23, 2011. The deal is worth an estimated $26 billion still requires approval from various State and Federal regulators as well as the company’s shareholders.

Mr. Olson continued: “While the IURC lacks the jurisdiction to review or approve the stock exchange effecting the merger itself, the Commission does have the authority to review the impact the proposed merger will have on Duke Energy Indiana’s retail electric customers. In addition, Indiana Code does grant the IURC authority to review and approve all affiliate transactions and agreements required to implement the merger to ensure that those agreements are in fact in the public interest.”

More specifically, Indiana Codes states:

IC 8-1-2-49

Inspection of books and records; affiliated interests; jurisdiction; annual reports

Sec. 49. . . . (2) Said commission shall have jurisdiction over affiliated interests having transactions, other than ownership of stock and receipt of dividends thereon, with utility corporations and other utility companies under the jurisdiction of the commission, to the extent of access to all accounts and records of joint or general expenses, any portion of which may be applicable to such transactions, and to the extent of authority to require such reports to be submitted by such affiliated interests, as the commission may prescribe….

No management, construction, engineering, or similar contract, made after March 8, 1933, with any affiliated interest, as defined in this section, shall be effective unless it shall first have been filed with the commission. If it be found that any such contract is not in the public interest, the commission, after investigation and a hearing, is hereby authorized to disapprove such contract.

The Commission did exercise this jurisdiction in 1995 when then PSI merged with Cinergy, and then again in 2005 when Cinergy merged with Duke Energy, both of which led to agreements that flowed back some of the merger benefits and savings and provided other important protections to Indiana electric customers. Moreover, the Commission exercised this jurisdiction before not after the prior mergers had been consummated. Of particular relevance here are the modified settlement agreement and final order approved by the IURC regarding the Duke-Cinergy merger on March 15, 2006 in Cause No. 42873.

Mr. Olson concluded: “We are hopeful that the Commission will recognize the potential negative impact to Indiana electric customers that this proposed merger presents. The benefits of a merger of this size at a minimum should be equally shared by shareholders and ratepayers. Ratepayers should not be asked to bear the costs of a transaction that may only serve to increase their electric bill and adversely affect the service they are provided. In addition, the existing affiliate agreements and regulatory commitments and conditions approved at the time of the Duke-Cinergy merger provide important protections to DEI’s Indiana customer. Those protections should not be surrendered without a fight to the new utility behemoth that would result from the proposed merger. Shareholders, executives, and the headquarters city of Charlotte, NC should not be the only winners to come out of this deal if it is ultimately approved.”

Download a copy of the news release here. CAC News Release on Duke-Progress Merger_22Aug2011

US SENATE: Energy could be ‘signature issue’ for fall — says Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 11, 2011 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

Dear Readers: Just a friendly reminder that US Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) is a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingham (D-NM). You may want to express your views and opinions on federal energy policy with Sen. Coats during the August recess. It can't hurt.

Laura Ann Arnold

P.S. See http://coats.senate.gov/issues/energy

08/10/2011

Katie Howell, E&E reporter

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he will be looking for GOP cooperation to make energy policy a "signature issue" for the Senate this fall.

Reid's comments today that the Senate will focus on job-creation legislation -- including energy bills -- echo those he made earlier this month before the chamber broke for a four-week recess.

"One of the things at the top of the list is energy jobs, and we're going to try to see if we can get a little cooperation from the Republicans so we can make that one of our signature issues during the next couple of months," Reid told reporters today during a conference call to promote the upcoming National Clean Energy Summit.

"I'm disappointed that we haven't done better," Reid added.

But he provided few details about what the energy jobs legislation would look like, and he stayed mum on whether any of it would come from the cache of legislation Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have pushed through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this year.

"That's one of the few committees in the Senate where there has been really outstanding cooperation between the chairman and ranking member," Reid said when asked about the prospect of including the panel's energy bills in the jobs agenda. "They have some legislation that has been reported out of the committee."

Bingaman indicated last week that he will push Democratic leaders to include some of the 14 reported energy bills as part of the jobs package.

Democrats in both the House and Senate are pushing the fall jobs agenda as they blast Republicans for blocking efforts to pass legislation earlier this year.

"We have been held up on everything, I'm sorry to say, by the Republicans," Reid said. "We need to do more from the Washington level, and certainly we are going to try to do that. But it's difficult with the backward-leaning House of Representatives we have."

"I think that we're going to have to focus on jobs, and I would hope that the Republicans will get off their kick of trying to do things that are message pieces of legislation and get to things that are very substantive," he added.

Reid said the Senate will immediately vote on a patent reform measure when the chamber returns to Washington, D.C., in September. Then it will take up trade legislation and energy measures, Reid said.

"Every work period, we're going to do jobs things," Reid said.

Duke Energy wins NC court case regarding renewable energy; Burning trees in power plants counts

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 06, 2011 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

Original article: http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2011/08/04/duke-wins-court-case-regarding.html

by Chris Bagley, Triangle Business Journal

The North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled that Duke Energy can count trees toward renewable energy quotas when it burns them in its power plants.

The decision affirms the North Carolina Utilities Commission’s earlier ruling that Duke can count whole, harvested trees as renewable biomass energy in order to meet quotas that go into effect next year. The Environmental Defense Fund and the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association had sued to block Duke from counting trees as renewable biomass.

“Any resource that can be considered a biomass because it is organic and renewable is a biomass resource within the plain meaning of the statute,” Judge Sanford Steelman wrote in the 3-0 opinion, which was joined by Judge Ann Marie Calabria and Judge Rick Elmore. “All wood fuel meets these criteria.”

The case arose over Duke’s designation of power plants in Rowan County and in Anderson County, South Carolina, as renewable energy facilities, following test runs with a mix of coal and wood chips. The EDF and the NC Sustainable Energy Association had argued that state law did not specify whole trees as a biomass resource alongside waste methane, animal waste, agricultural waste and energy crops. The state legislature passed the law in 2007, requiring public utilities to generate 12.5 percent of their energy from biomass and other renewable energy resources by 2012.

Charlotte-based Duke (NYSE: DUK) provides power in the western half of the Triangle.

Date: Thursday, August 4, 2011, 5:36pm EDT

FirstEnergy Ohio Utilities to Procure Solar Renewable Energy Credits Through Request for Proposal Process–including SRECs from Indiana

Posted by Laura Arnold / August 02, 2011 / Posted in Uncategorized / 1 Comments

Dear blog readers:

This RFP is seeking SRECs for FirstEnergy's Ohio utilities for 2011. The SRECs being solicited include:

Solar from Ohio-certified generation facilities, and
Solar from certified SREC generation facilities in states contiguous to Ohio --that includes Indiana!

Laura Ann Arnold

AKRON, Ohio, Aug. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE: FE) announced that a Request for Proposal (RFP) will be conducted to secure Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs) for customers of its Ohio utilities - Ohio Edison, Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company and Toledo Edison - to help meet the renewable energy requirements established under Ohio's energy law.

SRECs represent the environmental attributes of solar renewable electricity generation. For every megawatt hour of solar renewable electricity generated, an equivalent amount of SRECs are produced.

"Purchasing SRECs helps us meet the renewable energy requirements established by the State of Ohio and also helps build a market for renewable energy projects throughout the region," said John Dargie, vice president, Energy Efficiency, FirstEnergy.

The RFP is seeking SRECs for FirstEnergy's Ohio utilities for 2011. The SRECs being solicited include:

Solar from Ohio-certified generation facilities, and
Solar from certified SREC generation facilities in states contiguous to Ohio [emphasis added]

No energy or capacity will be purchased under the RFP. The number of individual bidders is not limited. Participants must meet and maintain specific credit and security qualifications, and must be able to prove their SRECs are certified or in the process of becoming certified by the State of Ohio.

The companies established a website to provide bidders with a central source of documents, data and other information for the RFP process. This information is available by accessing www.firstenergycorp.com/OH2011RECRFP2 . Questions will be answered directly through the website. To participate in the RFP, bidders must submit credit information by August 19, 2011, with proposals due by August 29, 2011.

The RFP process will be managed by Navigant Consulting, a global consulting firm with expertise in energy markets and procurement. The RFP Manager is Dan Bradley, Director, Navigant Consulting. He can be reached at (516) 876-4036, or email atrfp@navigant.com.

FirstEnergy is a diversified energy company dedicated to safety, reliability and operational excellence. Its ten electric distribution companies comprise the nation's largest investor-owned electric system. Its diverse generating fleet features non-emitting nuclear, scrubbed baseload coal, natural gas, and pumped-storage hydro and other renewables, and has a total generating capacity of more than 23,000 megawatts.

Forward-Looking Statements: This news release includes forward-looking statements based on information currently available to management. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. These statements include declarations regarding management's intents, beliefs and current expectations. These statements typically contain, but are not limited to, the terms "anticipate," "potential," "expect," "believe," "estimate" and similar words. Forward-looking statements involve estimates, assumptions, known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially due to: the speed and nature of increased competition in the electric utility industry, the impact of the regulatory process on the pending matters in the various states in which we do business including, but not limited to, matters related to rates, the status of the PATH project in light of PJM's direction to suspend work on the project pending review of its planning process, its re-evaluation of the need for the project and the uncertainty of the timing and amounts of any related capital expenditures, business and regulatory impacts from ATSI's realignment into PJM Interconnection, L.L.C, economic or weather conditions affecting future sales and margins, changes in markets for energy services, changing energy and commodity market prices and availability, financial derivative reforms that could increase our liquidity needs and collateral costs, the continued ability of FirstEnergy's regulated utilities to collect transition and other costs, operation and maintenance costs being higher than anticipated, other legislative and regulatory changes, and revised environmental requirements, including possible GHG emission, water intake and coal combustion residual regulations, the potential impacts of any laws, rules or regulations that ultimately replace CAIR including the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR) and the effects of the EPA's recently released MACT proposal to establish certain mercury and other emission standards for electric generating units, the uncertainty of the timing and amounts of the capital expenditures that may arise in connection with any NSR litigation or potential regulatory initiatives or rulemakings (including that such expenditures could result in our decision to shut down or idle certain generating units), adverse regulatory or legal decisions and outcomes with respect to our nuclear operations (including, but not limited to, the revocation or non-renewal of necessary licenses, approvals or operating permits by the NRC, including as a result of the incident atJapan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant), adverse legal decisions and outcomes related to Met-Ed's and Penelec's ability to recover certain transmission costs through their transmission service charge riders, the continuing availability of generating units and changes in their ability to operate at or near full capacity, replacement power costs being higher than anticipated or inadequately hedged, the ability to comply with applicable state and federal reliability standards and energy efficiency mandates, changes in customers' demand for power, including but not limited to, changes resulting from the implementation of state and federal energy efficiency mandates, the ability to accomplish or realize anticipated benefits from strategic goals, efforts, and our ability, to improve electric commodity margins and the impact of, among other factors, the increased cost of coal and coal transportation on such margins, the ability to experience growth in the distribution business, the changing market conditions that could affect the value of assets held in FirstEnergy's nuclear decommissioning trusts, pension trusts and other trust funds, and cause FirstEnergy to make additional contributions sooner, or in amounts that are larger than currently anticipated, the ability to access the public securities and other capital and credit markets in accordance with FirstEnergy's financing plan, the cost of such capital and overall condition of the capital and credit markets affecting FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries, changes in general economic conditions affecting FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries, interest rates and any actions taken by credit rating agencies that could negatively affect FirstEnergy's and its subsidiaries' access to financing or their costs and increase requirements to post additional collateral to support outstanding commodity positions, LOCs and other financial guarantees, the continuing uncertainty of the national and regional economy and its impact on the major industrial and commercial customers of FirstEnergy's subsidiaries, issues concerning the soundness of financial institutions and counterparties with which FirstEnergy and its subsidiaries do business, issues arising from the recently completed merger of FirstEnergy and Allegheny Energy, Inc. and the ongoing coordination of their combined operations including FirstEnergy's ability to maintain relationships with customers, employees or suppliers, as well as the ability to successfully integrate the businesses and realize cost savings and any other synergies and the risk that the credit ratings of the combined company or its subsidiaries may be different from what the companies expect, the risks and other factors discussed from time to time in FirstEnergy's and its applicable subsidiaries' SEC filings, and other similar factors. Dividends declared from time to time on FirstEnergy's common stock during any annual period may in aggregate vary from the indicated amount due to circumstances considered by FirstEnergy's Board of Directors at the time of the actual declarations. A security rating is not a recommendation to buy, or hold securities and is subject to revision or withdrawal at any time by the assigning rating agency. Each rating should be evaluated independently of any other rating. The foregoing review of factors should not be construed as exhaustive. New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for management to predict all such factors, nor assess the impact of any such factor on FirstEnergy's business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. FirstEnergy expressly disclaims any current intention to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE: FirstEnergy Corp.

This communication is from Navigant Consulting Inc. E-mail text or attachments may contain information which is confidential and may also be privileged. This communication is for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s). If you have received this communication in error, please return it with the title "received in error" to NCISecurity@navigant.com, and then delete the email and destroy any copies of it. In addition, this communication is subject to, and incorporates by reference, additional disclaimers found in Navigant Consulting's "Email Disclaimer" section at www.Navigant.com.

Navigant

Consulting, Inc.
Company Registration Number: UK Ltd. 3641719
Registered in Delaware, USA
Registered Office Address: 30 South Wacker Drive, Suite 3400, Chicago, Illinois 60606

FAA Funding Impasse Could Tie Up Indianapolis Airport Projects Including Proposed Solar Farm

Posted by Laura Arnold / July 28, 2011 / Posted in Uncategorized / No Comments

Last week during the Indiana Renewable Energy Conference held at the Indiana Convention Center, rumors were rampant that an announcement was expected this week on the Indianapolis Airport Authority (IAA) Solar Farm. Reliable sources also indicated that three companies have been selected as finalists for the 10 MW proposed Solar Farm project which is expected to use the IPL Rate REP or feed-in tariff. If you have any more details, please let us know.

Original Article: http://www.insideindianabusiness.com/newsitem.asp?ID=48945

Wayne Pratt, InsideINdianaBusiness.com

Bertolini says debate over funding the FAA is nothing new.

Some long-term strategic initiatives for Indianapolis International Airport could be in limbo as funding for non-safety related Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) functions continues to be worked out in Washington, D.C. Airport Authority Spokesman Carlo Bertolini says projects including a new de-icing facility, solar farm and hangar for a luxury aviation company could be held up for an indefinite period. The impasse has prompted a partial shutdown of the federal agency.

Bertolini says there is no way to tell how long the impasse will continue. The Washington Post is reporting efforts on Capitol Hill to reach a debt deal are overshadowing the FAA partial shutdown. Senate leaders do not want to involve the chamber in what could be a lengthy debate in case lawmakers need speedy approval for a debt deal.

The FAA funding situation is being closely monitored as well by officials with the Gary/Chicago International Airport. A runway expansion project, partially funded by the FAA is set to begin. Although reimbursement requests have not been filed, officials believe eventually the impasse could delay the $153 million project.

Source: Inside INdiana Business