Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. has won praise in some quarters for its proposal to redevelop Russell Station and build a new 300-megawatt electricity generating plant. While redeveloping this brownfield site clearly makes sense, retreating to the days when monopoly utilities built, owned and operated power plants is not in ratepayers' best interest. Ratepayers should not be forced to pay the escalating costs of new utility-owned plants plus a guaranteed profit. It is the old way and skews our emerging markets.
Competitive suppliers have built most of the new power generation in the last decade — including more than 5,000 megawatts (enough power to supply 5 million homes) of cleaner, state-of-the-art generation in New York since the year 2000. These projects have been undertaken by private companies at their own risk and expense. In today's competitive wholesale power market, entrepreneurial risk-taking, disciplined capital investment and operational efficiency are the keys to success for power providers and the best hope for consumers. Unfortunately, these terms and business philosophies were never synonymous with regulated utilities.
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