Power Engineering - National Energy Marketers Association refocuses advocacy strategy on win-win scenarios for consumers, utilities and regulators

Washington, DC, July 14, 2003 -- The Executive Committee of the National Energy Marketers Association (NEM) met in Chicago to review and refocus NEM's advocacy efforts to hasten the speed of restructuring throughout North America.

Experts from across the U.S., Canada and the European Union were nominated and elected to chair regional, national and international policy development teams. "NEM's new leadership will reach out to state PUCs, consumer groups and selected utilities that support restructured markets, and help develop successful programs which incorporate the best features that have worked successfully elsewhere," said Craig Goodman, President of NEM.

Wholesale Energy Markets- Reports from every region of the country were encouraging as it appears the industry has turned a corner with both confidence and liquidity returning to the marketplace.

"Recent proposals for reporting protocols combined with NEM's suggestion for a safe harbor rebuttable presumption of good faith is a low cost, efficient way to increase the number of companies reporting and can provide both regulatory certainty and high quality pricing information to the marketplace," said Goodman.

"NEM is encouraged by the broad-based support for the safe harbor provision. If the safe harbor is constructed properly and coordinated among the FERC, CFTC, SEC and DOJ, it could also provide a major incentive to increase the liquidity in both the short and long term energy markets," said Goodman.

Retail Energy Markets- "Every NEM Executive Committee member engaged in the retail energy services and technology markets is convinced that there are win-win market structures and designs, which if implemented properly and promptly can and will save consumers billions of dollars, while preserving and enhancing shareholder value for both utilities and unregulated energy service and technology providers," said Goodman.

"Given the fact that neither the energy commodity nor technology are properly considered profit centers for utilities, marketers can remove significant costs and risks from the utilities' obligation to serve, enhance service to consumers and permit utilities to earn greater returns on their delivery system assets with very little, if any, risk to the utility or its shareholders. In fact, the utility of the future will come to realize that energy marketers and technology providers will become a utility's best, lowest cost customer. Marketers can remove risk from utility operations at virtually no cost to the utility or its ratepayers."

"I think that if done properly, NEM members could support performance based incentives for encouraging customer migration and removal of current barriers to providing new and innovative customer services," said Goodman.

Technology Standards and Policy Development- NEM's Technology Policy Development Team is staffed with the top technology experts from around the world. All in attendance were in agreement that the adoption of technology standards, uniform data dictionaries and electronic protocols has taken far too long.

NEM members have already developed and several have offered proprietary technology to standard setting organizations to jump start the market so that information can be exchanged easier, faster and more accurately.

"Technology standards are an absolute necessity to enable a restructured energy market. They affect everything from billing to metering to energy usage information to matching trades and safeguarding against improper trading activities. We have been waiting five years for technology standards. The technology has already been developed, it is now time to implement a uniform set of standards," said Goodman.

The National Energy Marketers Association (NEM) is a national, non-profit trade association representing marketers of energy and energy-related products, services information and technologies throughout the United States, Canada and the U.K. For information on upcoming events, or for copies of NEM policy papers, contact NEM's Washington, DC headquarters at (202) 333-3288 or its Web site at www.energymarketers.com.

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