Utilities | featured news

Carbon dioxide emissions hit an unexpected 20-year low earlier this year, mainly because utilities have switched from coal to natural gas.

So just when we thought we had heard all about the threats the hazardous use of derivatives could unleash on to the economy, a leading bank [Morgan Stanley] apparently managed to find a new way to use them, this time to help gouge consumers of more than $150 million.

The majority of U.S. households spend more per month on technology bills than on utilities, according to a new report published by remote technical support company iYogi.iYogi surveyed 1,100 customers to determine whether consumers' monthly expenditures aligned with the U.S. Department of Energy estimate that Americans spend 6 to 12 percent of their yearly incomes on utilities.

PG&E said its chief executive will retire at the end of the month and it is conducting a search for a successor, a surprise change at a utility rocked by a series of setbacks. Peter Darbee, PG&E's chairman and chief executive, was brought in in 1999 as an outsider who would bring fresh ideas, but appears to have been felled by inattention to the bread-and-butter basics of the utility business: providing safe and reliable service to customers.