23 Mar Brief on: Austin Energy’s Annual Report

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I was lucky enough to attend the Austin Electric Utility Commission‘s monthly public meeting last night. The meeting had a GREAT turnout of hard-working Austin Energy employees (who we very much appreciate) and numerous citizen/business/non-profit representatives. 

Overall, Austin Energy’s Annual Report1 seems to have gotten a good grade by the EUC. However, concerns about openness and transparency (aka. secrecy) in the way Austin Energy shares information, were mixed into the annual report discussion. Mike Sloan, a local energy consultant and clean energy activist2, in particular voiced some of the following questions (paraphrased)3: 

  1. Why does it appear that Austin Energy fuel costs don’t match AE collections? There appears to be a $131M surplus in collections.
  2. Why is AE investing less $ into energy efficiency today (2009) than in 1997? 
  3. Why are we not given "availability information" on AE’s natural gas resources? 
  4. Why are there some significant discrepancies between what AE reported during the last 9 months of of public discussion on Electricity Generation Planning, and what’s shown in AE’s annual report regarding the "capacity factor" of Austin’s coal plant? 
  5. There are 7 utilities with similar structures to ours in the state of Texas. Each of these other utlities issues 250 to 300 pg annual reports. AE’s 2009 annual report is just 5 pgs. Why is so much data held secret by the utility?

Some interesting responses and follow ups came from EUC board members (paraphrased): 

re-#2, "Bernie" Bernfield: 
Isn’t it possible that b/c energy efficiency technologies cost so much less, today, than they did in 1997 that Austin Energy is actually having more success with energy efficiency projects than it did 12 to 13 years ago? In future annual reports, it’d be nice to see a metric for how many buildings have had energy efficiency improvements made, and how those improvements compare to historical metrics.

re-#2, Steve Smaha: 
Costs per energy efficiency project have lowered… Are we getting better or worse bang for the buck? 

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EUC commissioner Steve Smaha also voiced the idea that future annual reports need to deliver "two parallel accounting systems" — one showing costs, the other showing carbon emissions data.

In summary, the annual report discussion was well executed by Austin Enegy CFO Elaine Hart and the meeting moved onto to a cogent series of presentations on "transparency." More on that soon.

Notes.
1. Contact me for a PDF of the AE Annual Report.
2. Check out Mike’s organization: PowerSmack.org.
3. See more of Mike Sloan’s questions here.
Image shows relative prices of various energy generation technologies. Note comparisons.

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Your comments appreciated.

 

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