EnergyBiz - January/February 2008 - (Page 86) » leGal eaGle Securing Energy Assets regulatOrs FOcus On supply By JiM sullivan at a time W hen energy issUes a r e gLoba L (GuesT opinion) – a genie that won’t be returning to the bottle – even state issues must be addressed from an international perspective. The issues have never been more daunting. Yet each time the men and women who regulate utilities, members of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, sit face-to-face, my confidence is renewed that we will find responsible ways to work through the issues. NARUC’s Critical Infrastructure Committee was created as a temporary, ad hoc panel after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Under its previous chairpersons – most recently Commissioner Sandra Hochstetter of Arkansas – the committee has done yeoman’s work in addressing the all-too-sobering responsibility of protecting our energy and water resource infrastructure from terrorism. Over time, the committee took up issues related to natural disasters as well. Over the coming year, I want to broaden the committee’s charge still further. Working in concert with the committee’s co-chair, Commissioner Elizabeth B. Fleming of South Carolina, we want to address economic threats to the reliability of our critical infrastructure, especially with regard to energy. While this new emphasis reflects my personal belief, based on 25 years as a public utility regulator, that my principal role is to improve the economy of our state – the quality of life of its residents and vitality of its businesses – it is more than personal bias that prompts me to steer the committee NewsFlash in this direction. In the new millennium, New yoRK City potential threats to the CaRboN law security of our electricity New york’s city council and natural gas infrastruchas adopted a plan ture have taken on an to cut greenhouse emissions in the nation’s unprecedented dimension largest city 30 percent – one that is international by 2030. in scope and economic in It directed the city to nature. I am not an alarmist, achieve comparable cuts on city facilities by 2017. and never have been. But The Associated Press I can read the handwriting reported the measure on the wall of economic is unenforceable and prosperity and national has no penalties for security, and it is written in noncompliance. The city has reported Chinese, Hindi, Portuguese it released 58.3 and Russian. million metric tons of As world energy supplies greenhouse gases in become more tenuous, the 2005, 1 percent of the national total. United States economy and its national security will become more vulnerable. Protecting the brick and mortar of our energy infrastructure from both man-made and natural disasters remains imperative, to be sure, but I believe we must also begin to examine potential threats inherent in globalization. The nature of this challenge is complex, to Jim Sullivan say the least, Photo CourtEsy of AlABAmA PuBliC sErviCE Commision but our efforts to address it will be driven by a straightforward goal, ensuring the United States maintains an adequate supply of energy for generations to come. Doing so is no “gimme.” Predictably – and correctly – the extraordinary economic growth of China and India at a time when fossil fuels continue to comprise more than 80 percent of the world’s primary energy mix has focused attention on a host of environmental issues. This attention is both extremely important and overdue, but it must not be allowed to muddy our recognition that the fundamental threat we face is one of supply. And in any case, what may appear on the surface to be conflicting priorities – protecting our environment vs. protecting our energy security – are rapidly evolving into complementary challenges. Each, after all, has a common denominator: fossil fuels. Where we go from here is another column for another day. Clearly, nuclear and other non-carbonbased fuels will be key until further research enables us to produce fossil fuels that are environmentally and politically acceptable. Technological innovation undoubtedly represents our best hope from an economic perspective, as it has throughout American history. Jim Sullivan is president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, past president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and chairman of NARUC’s Critical Infrastructure Committee. 86 E n E rgyB i z January/February 2008 http://www.energycentral.com
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