The obvious choice to replace Condoleeza is Ansel.

Brayton Point is a giant coal-fired power plant. Shut it down.

The author's hand waving about Enron and Wall Street don't amount to anything beyond an appeal to mood affiliation. Businesses often by suites of assets and divest or shutter the less valuable among them. In particular (and happily), many coal plants are being shuttered because they can no longer be operated profitably. I would guess that this plan was built into the price paid for the suite of generators.

The only "analysis" presented in the article is an implication that this will cost rate payers as much as the Enron manipulation did. Fortunately, the regulatory environment that enabled Enron in California was unique, and while this closure might .

This is a huge positive for the world, and new developments in energy storage and efficiency and renewable generation will reduce the need for peaking power. There will be some transition costs to rate payers, but I doubt they will be large and almost certainly will not be as great as the health and other environmental consequences of the coal plant.

If you think "gun trusts" are out there committing crimes with guns, then you know even less about guns than I thought.

Journalists and bloggers from all sides are guilty of the meaningless phrase "ties to Wall Street" as that naturally encompasses every publically traded company.

It's always had such a negative connotation. I suppose that's why Sotheby declined my mother's request to auction three very large lithographs of Wall Street, the public library in lower Manhattan done by famous New Mexico artist Gerald Cassidy (1879-1934). But if they were of his usual southwest subjects it may have been quite different.

The fact that something as basic and essential to modern life as electricity can be privately owned for profit seems utterly wrong-headed to me.

@9: The same can be said about food, gasoline, batteries, and even toilet tissue. If you are saying that it seems wrong headed in the context of our capitalist system; you're not being realistic.

@10. Our economy can perform in the exact same ways that benefit your peers, and retain the same laws that govern commerce and corporate liability; and still transform the delivery of electricity and fuels into a publically-owned network.

That article on energy "auctions" was very educational. BTW, the same rules that allowed gouging in the past (including in the recent past in Texas) are still in place:

This occurs because suppliers learn to arrange their bids to ensure the highest price, a good example of how competition does not always favor customers or lower prices. While collusion among suppliers is illegal, learning how to jack up prices by studying bidding patterns is perfectly legal.

The original market rules, by the way, were drafted by a massive fraud posing as an electricity trading company named Enron.

to quote @7 and @8,

@5

"This is a huge positive for the world, and new developments in energy storage and efficiency and renewable generation will reduce the need for peaking power."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

"There will be some transition costs to rate payers, but I doubt they will be large and almost certainly will not be as great as the health and other environmental consequences of the coal plant."

"Transitional costs"! Ha ha ha ha ha!!

"Free market"! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Free market for all! What could possibly go wrong?! Enron? That was so long ago! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

It's totally different now, guys! We fixed it! I swear to god! Trust me! There's even a Democrat in the White House!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Free market for all!

What? Collusion among energy companies? The gouging of the consumers? Further transfer of wealth to the top? Don't be naive! Not in America! Not in the free market!

The free market always benefits the consumer! The free market is the guardian of the consumer!

(all tags off?)

Texas and California have very different regulatory environments from New England. Texas isn't even under the FERC's jurisdiction. The history of the California crisis is really interesting. The state made some unique and terrible choices in its partial deregulation. Texas, in contrast to New England, doesn't have capacity markets, so spikes of peak power are likely to be higher.

Even if you dislike that auction rule, however, the real issue is about this power plant. The author is using unexplained references to corporate power and past crises is different jurisdictions to argue that a massive coal-fired generator should continue to run through 40,000 tons of coal every few days.

There are many problems with our system of electricity regulation. But this article is unsophisticated populism in the service of fossil fuels. The central thesis--that the only reason a company would shut the asset is to manipulate power prices--is undermined by the fact that coal-fired plants are shutting down throughout New England. We should cheer that development, not fight it.

@11--As far as public ownership, it's important to distinguish between transmission and distribution and generation. All three can be publicly owned, as is the case with Seattle City Light, but they present different cases. The argument for public transmission and distribution is stronger, I think, because they are networks (like roads and internet) and the services are provided by regulated monopolies, which means there's no competition, anyway.

@10

All those things have healthy competative markets. Don't like something? Try a different product.

If your electricity company fucks you over to make a few bucks, what can you do exactly? Other than pay up?

I've also noted that during the Gregoire Administration, many small dams were being shut down, some with generating capacity.

Of course the coal fired power plant that was supposed to be shut down during her reign, was left burning until 2025.

But hers was an administration that spent its first term doing....well.....not much....except for adding a fee to use state parks.

Here second term was, like McGinn's, had one focus. The tunnel. Only hers was to build it. In order to do so, all Rule of Law and the idea of taxation with representation was thrown to the wind.

If this tiny Duchy does go down, it will be her fault.

@17--get solar. It gets cheaper every day, even in New England.

I am suspicious of the motives of the reporter who wrote that power plant article. Brayton Point was a horrible source of pollution here in New England, I was one of many marchers last summer trying to get it shut down.

Wall Street isn't stupid--electricity will soon be partially distributed and local, like in Germany. They can't create a monopoly. The higher the prices go up, the faster people will install solar panels.

@ 19 he is your president too just like bush was my president and it's much more than the goP could do.

@13 the young do favor capitalism you are a far left loon who doesn't live in the real world. Many times capitalism and democracy go hand in hand

Columnist who wrote about Brayton Point here...

How nice to read generally thoughtful comments here on my column, unlike the ill-informed rants that fill so many other websites. Still, some posters here make points not supported by the facts in my column, which you can read here -- http://alj.am/1uc13vX

The various electricity markets all remain vulnerable to gaming by withholding, as explained in FREE LUNCH, my best-selling expose of hidden subsidies, and official reports issued as recently as last month.

As the Conn. AG and others note in filings, and my column states, closing this base load plant was not part of a plan to add new generation and a baseline price has already doubled because Brayton was not bid. The owners make no mention of the environmental effects of burning coal, only their naked assertion of inefficiency with no data. Intervenors dispute the owners' naked claims.

Capacity markets raise questions about the whole theory of clearance price auctions and whether they can or do send an adequate signal on pricing to produce the intended results.

@17 what are you suspicious of? And why? My first national journalism award was for exposing the most flagrant air polluter in Michigan and how it was secretly half-owned by a state senator who fought to keep it open in the first half of the 1970s. You can read up on my investigative work at the Wikipedia page that others created about my career. I sign everything I write so my career is an open book.

The issue in my column is price-gouging not coal v. Other sources.

And FYI, reporters write articles, while columnists get paid to express their opinion -- in this case on a subject I teach third year law and graduate business students, regulation.

More us coming on this and other important business and economic issues in my weekly columns for AlJazeera America (and my pieces for Newsweek, Tax Analysts and National Memo), much of it business and economic news that affects your pocket, but that gets no or little coverage in other forums, including the major news organizations that employed me as an investigative reporter or columnist over the last 46 years.

Uhm. Even if you purchase an NFA item through a trust, it still costs $200 and takes months to get the tax stamp to purchase an NFA item. Statistically speaking the number of crimes/deaths/injuries caused by legally owned NFA items is 0. Once again gun-control-nuts who know nothing about firearms are chasing red herrings in the name of "safety".

If you were serious about reducing gun related crime you'd be looking at cheap handguns, not expensive, and rare, NFA items.

@23, I think you were referring to me. Can you blame me for being suspicious when so much of the media supports the fossil fuels industry? I wasn't familiar with your cv, please don't take it personally. I was only judging the content of that particular article. Shutting down Brayton Point is a wonderful thing, even if it was done by scumbags for no other motive than greed. I'll take what I can get. I was delighted to see such quick action after marching and holding a picket sign. If they are trying to raise prices, the squeaky wheel gets the ax, and here's hoping the environmental movement does plenty of squeaking.