Environment, economy and energy: Meeting the multiple challenges of the 1990s

Abstract

In the fall of 1991, New England Electric System (NEES) released its third major resource plan, NEESPLAN 3: Environment, Economy, and Energy in the 1990s.' In it, the Company set three major goals for the decade: (1) to reduce continuously the environmental impacts of providing electric service, including a 45% reduction in our weighted air emissions index between 1990 and 2000; (2) to maintain competitiveness by keeping price increases at or below inflation, on average, through the year 2000; and, (3) to ensure resource diversity and reliability by increasing nonutility generation, repowering existing power plants, and exploring new technologies. NEES developed these goals to provide a unified central vision for the company to respond to changing times. NEES is basing their corporate direction on their fundamental beliefs that environmental concerns are here to stay, and that these concerns must be met in tandem with cost and service challenges. By implementing NESSPLAN 3, NEES wants to demonstrate that many of the public policy goals of the environmental and regulatory communities can be better achieved by focusing on overall results rather than by litigating the details of individual power supply decisions. This article discusses the development of NEESPLAN 3, while paying particularmore » attention to the various alternatives they examined to reach the goal of a 45% reduction in air emissions.« less