For two decades research and development on new energy technologies has been "off the national agenda" in Washington. Last week, after his first post-election visit to Washington, to meet with Congressional leaders and Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, President-elect George W. Bush told reporters that the US has a national energy problem and that his administration was going to deal with it in a comprehensive fashion.

For decades, energy advocates have anticipated the day of renewed interest in energy, expecting that it would be precipitated by a crisis brought on by another cut-off of imported oil supplies or by a recognition of the threat of global warming. However, the present crisis atmosphere has resulted from neither. Instead, it has been spawned by the deregulation of the electricity industry in California.

Electricity rates nationally have historically been set by State Public Utility Commissions to ensure a fair rate of return on investment in new power plants by electric utililties. Recently, in California and elsewhere, deregulation of the electric utilities has resulted in electric utilities divesting themselves of power plant ownership and failure to construct new plants. Electric utility companies now buy power from independent producers, who own and operate power plants.

The 1996 California law deregulating the industry was supposed to result in lower rates and plentiful power. The State's major power producers had their consumer rates frozen until and unless they could prove that they had repaid debts on investments made prior to deregulation in nuclear power plants and alternative sources of energy. However, after San Diego Gas and Electric offered such proof and was exempted from the rate freeze, it promptly increased consumer rates by a factors of 2-3, causing a major consumer uproar. Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric, the State's other two largest utilities, remain under the rate freeze but claim they are on the verge of bankruptcy because they have had to pay about $8 billion more to buy electricity than they are allowed to charge the consumers. The Washington Post reports that out of state corporations now own the generating stations and are charging prices tens and sometimes hundreds of times higher than they did before. When other Western States showed reluctance to continue to ship their own marginal electricity supplies to California, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson issued an emergency order requiring that Western power producers continue to provide surplus electricity to California. Richardson told an emergency meeting of Western governors, federal energy regulators and private power company executives, "I am extending this emergency order for another week (until December 27) to make sure that California can keep its lights on."

Power producers have eschewed the construction of large central station power plants in favor of adding low cost gas turbines. Until earlier this year, natural gas was a relatively cheap fuel. Since January, however, natural gas prices have quadrupled, according to the New York Times. Furthermore, natural gas supplies have begun to dwindle, precipitating a revival in the previously moribund drilling industry. The Times quotes A. J. Jacques, whose company, Cheyenne Drilling, is operating at full capacity, as saying "I don't know how long it will last, but its the closest I've seen to a boom in 20 years."

Senator Frank Murkowski, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee says he plans to introduce legislation that would offer government support to a wide range of energy options. A spokeswoman for Murkowski's office said the bill would be "a very comprehensive approach to energy policy."

Advocates of various energy technologies, like nuclear fission and so-called renewables, are hoping to see a resurgence of investment in research and development. It is not clear how the advocates of fusion energy will respond to this opportunity.