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Institutional Issues
Published in Vaughn Nelson, Kenneth Starcher, Wind Energy, 2018
Vaughn Nelson, Kenneth Starcher
Incentives are usually in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, mandates, and regulations. Public utility commissions now demand that utilities use integrated resource planning and must consider renewables and conservation in their planning processes. Can utilities make money on kilowatt-hours saved? Should the consumers or shareholders take the risks? Three Mile Island in the United States, Chernobyl in Russia, Fukushima in Japan, and the nuclear utility industry in general are good examples of political impacts from the local to the national level. The federal Price–Anderson Act limited the amount of liability from nuclear accidents. Without that legislation, the nuclear industry could not have sold plants to utilities.
Understanding Energy Bills
Published in Barney L. Capehart, William J. Kennedy, Wayne C. Turner, Guide to Energy Management, 2020
Barney L. Capehart, William J. Kennedy, Wayne C. Turner
In the US, private electric and gas utilities are chartered and regulated by individual states, and are also subject to some federal regulation. The state utility regulatory agencies are most often called Public Utility Commissions or Public Service Commissions. Private utilities are called Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs), and their retail rates for residential, commercial and industrial customers are subject to review and approval by the state utility regulatory agencies.
Service levels for the four billion people with piped water on premises
Published in Water International, 2018
Organizing regulatory programmes involves different types of regulators, and which would have responsibility for data management is an important issue (Grigg, 2010). In the water sector, they regulate health and safety, water allocation, environmental water quality, fish and wildlife protection, rates and charges, and service access and quality. Here, we are mainly interested in health and safety, rates and charges, and service access and quality. In the US, the EPA issues rules to guide state government agencies to regulate health and safety. States have separate public utility commissions to regulate the rates of privately owned utilities, but normally not the rates of publicly owned utilities. Service access and quality are not regulated directly, but are controlled through political and legal processes, as are the rates of publicly owned utilities.