February 28, 2008



More than half of the electric energy offered to customers in the United States comes from coal-fired plants, and most observers expect these numbers to stay the same for many years to come. Is coal the fuel of the past or the fuel for the future? In this video lecture, Prof. Steve Weissman will also discuss the pluses and minuses of a nuclear power resurgence.

1. Introduction to Energy and Electricity
2. Public Utilities & Rate Regulation: Introduction to Finance and Regulatory Economics
3. Public Utilities & Rate Regulation: Cost of Service Regulation (Part 1)
4. Public Utilities & Rate Regulation: Cost of Service Regulation (Part 2)
5. Public Utilities and Rate Regulation
6. Resource Alternatives: Introduction to Tradition Fuels, and Oil and Hydroelectric Power
7. Resource Alternatives: Coal and Nuclear Power
8. Resource Alternatives - Natural Gas: The Future and LNG
9. Resource Alternatives - Renewable Energy: The Technologies and the Programs
10. Demand Side Management: Energy Efficiency
11. Performance Based Ratemaking and Decoupling
12. Deregulation and Markets: Wholesale Electricity Markets and Retail Competition
13. Deregulation and Markets: The California and Western Energy Crisis of 2000-2001
14. Climate Change, Carbon Markets and Recap and Conclusion
15. Course Review

In this course, Prof. Steve Weissman gives 15 video lectures on Energy Regulations and the Environment. This course introduces students to the legal, economic, and structural issues that both shape our energy practices and provide opportunities to overcome these critical problems. The course focuses primarily on the regulation and design of electricity systems and markets, since so many energy choices—the use of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, the green alternatives such as solar, wind, and energy conservation or “demand side management”— relate to the way we generate or deliver electricity, or avoid the need to do so.