Tough choices offer US a chance to live up to past: Exelon CFO

Las Vegas (Platts)--17Apr2007

The combination of climate change dynamics and national security
interests means that the US faces enormous energy choices, according to Exelon
CFO John Young. While Young said Tuesday he is optimistic because "we've
always met all these challenges," he also acknowledged that "the challenges
and the opportunities are immense."

Young told a Las Vegas audience that the New York Times Magazine cover
article Sunday struck him as an important piece, "taking a step back...to what
this is all about...linking our industry and how the energy industry works to
what our national security issues are."

Times' columnist Thomas Friedman's article Sunday posited that climate
change dynamics and the US dependence on imported fuels offer an opportunity
for the country to mobilize, go "green," to address both climate change and
national security, and to take a strong world leadership position that way.

Exelon's Young, who is also the Chicago-based company's executive vice
president for finance and markets, found a lot of strong material in
Friedman's piece, he said.

The US over the next 25 years will have to try to rebuild all the
generation it has put in place over the past 100 years, Young told Platts'
Global Power Markets Conference, while at the same time rebuilding highways,
railroads, and ports.

"The whole infrastructure of the country is challenged," he said, as the
world is moving from an Atlantic-based economy to a Pacific-based one. The US
is positioned between those two and is in an ideal place to be, he suggested,
but will have to work "to not just become the UK of the 21st century, an
intellectual participant, not an industrial participant."

Having to rebuild up to 800,000 MW of generation brings big risks, he
said, and "climate change is only accelerating that." Having noted that Exelon
operates 20 nuclear reactors and is looking at building more, he said nuclear,
as a no-carbon source, has an important place in the future generation
picture, particularly since its efficiency and safety have grown hugely over
the last 10 years.

--Kathy Larsen, kathy_larsen@platts.com