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Elk River <br />Municipal, Utilities <br />13069 Orono Parkway • P.O. Box 430 <br />Elk River, MN 55330-0430 <br />July 10, 2008 <br />Memo to File <br />From: Bryan Adams <br />Subject: Notes from June 2008 APPA National Conference in New Orleans, LA. <br />Mark Crisson, CEO APPA <br />Mark discussed the four major challenges facing electric utilities. <br />1) Rising costs — strategies to off -set <br />a) More efficiency <br />b) More information thru APPA web -site <br />c) Customer education <br />d) Improve codes & standards <br />e) Other alliances with Department of Energy <br />2) Climate change — initiate task force <br />3) RTO rates not competitive <br />4) Workforce issues — 40% retiring in 5 years <br />Phone: 763.441.2020 <br />Fax: 763.441.8099 <br />Gary Langer, Director of Polling ABC News <br />He discussed surveys and how they can be accurate or very inaccurate depending on how questions are <br />asked — agree -disagree question should not be used. Tendency is for people to agree. Internet has <br />changed opinion due to all of the available data which may be true or inaccurate. Big issue now is: <br />1) Economy and gas prices <br />2) Iraqis in 2nd place <br />Future of Fuels by R.W. Beck and Catherine Elder <br />As natural gas prices increase, reserves have increased due to higher price technologies to retrieve gas <br />becoming cost effective. Natural gas consumption has stayed flat last 15 years at approximately 21 <br />TCF/year. As electric generation uses more gas, industry is using less. 20% of United States electric <br />generation comes from methane. <br />She was not concerned about the finite quantity of gas resources which seemed odd. She discussed <br />natural gas use, nuclear, coal gasification and coal with and without CCS. <br />Power to Reduce CO? by Revis James of EPRI <br />