6.1. ERMUSR 03-09-2010 - Laserfiche WebLink

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r, ®American Pubfic Power Air.. Association 2010 APPA Legislative Rally Key Message Points Support Programs to Promote Environmental Stewardship and to Provide Comparable Incentives for Public Power's Development Of Clean Energy APPA continues to support important federal initiatives and prograns that will enable public power to address enviromnental challenges. Specifically, we support: ^ Increasing substantially the. authorization for the Clean Renewable Energy Bond (CREB) program for investment in renewable resources; ^ Including public power in additional incentives for renewable energy provided to the private sector dur- ing this economic downturn, including the Section 1603 grant-in-lieu of tax credit program provided to the private sector in the stimulus bill to build renew- able generation; ^ Restoring funding for the Department of Energy's Renewable Energy Production Incentive Program (REPI) in FY 2011-in order to ensure that appli- cants receive the full two cents per kWh production payment that is comparable to that the investor- owned utilities receive through the Production Tax Credit; ^ Ensuring the inclusion of incentives for public power systems for production of other clean resources, in- cluding clean coal and nuclear; whenever incentives are made available to for-profit entities. In particu- lar APPA supports the transferability of the nuclear Production Tax Gredit to public power electric utili- ties partnering in new nuclear facilities. ^ Funding programs to promote the commercially vi- able production of Flexible Fuel Plug-in Hybrid Elec- tric Vehicles (PHEVs) that will reduce GHG emissions by utilizing off-peak electricity as a trans- portation fuel. Address Dysfunctional Wholesale Electricity Markets by Providing Greater Transparency Federal electricity policies should promote effective competition supplemented by effective regulation in wholesale electricity markets as a means of benefiting and protecting consumers, and should do so in ways that recognize the regional diversity of those markets. In many regions of the country, principally those re- gions where the wholesale market is administered by a regional transmission organization (RTO) or independ- ent system operator (ISO), these goals are not being met and consumers are being harmed as a result. Prob- lems in these RTO/ISO-run markets are numerous and. the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has the ability to address them should they so choose. How- ever, FERC has resisted major changes to these markets for years, despite the strong concerns raised by con- sumer-side interests, including APPA. Given this situation, Congress could and should take a simple but extremely important step in improving these markets by requiring greater transparency - in- cluding the timely posting of bid data, the identity of those generators bidding power into the markets, and the actual operating costs of the generating units, com- pared to their bids. One of the primary indicators used by economists, regulators and market analysts to deter- mine whether or not electricity markets are competitive is whether market participants are exercising market power or manipulating prices or quantities. The princi- pal way to determine whether or not market power is being exerted or market manipulation is occurring is to analyze market data, which. is not currently available or is only available in a limited way months after the mar- ket transactions have occurred. APPA urges Congress to improve transparency in these RTO/ISO-run electricity markets by requiring this information to be made pub- lic and in a timely manner. www.APPAnet.org