1st Annual Energy Roundtable: Electricity Restructuring

The AAI on September 7 brought together forty leaders from government, the public interest community, and the private sector to converse off the record for four hours about competition policy issues involved in the restructuring of the electricity industry. Public sector participants included high level representatives of FERC, the FTC, DOJ, and three states. No minutes were kept. The meeting consisted of four sessions. The first, dealing with horizontal issues, was moderated by David Mohre of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The second, covering vertical issues, was moderated by Dan Watkiss of Bracewell & Patterson. The third session focused on governance problems and was moderated by Alan Richardson of the American Public Power Association. A fourth session was an open discussion on antitrust priorities moderated by AAI Senior Research Fellow John Kwoka, an economics professor at George Washington University. The roundtable was part of an effort by AAI to help assure that a suitable institutional framework is in place so that restructuring will be planted in a workably competitive environment.