our next witness is paul hibberd, chairman of the mci department of public utilities, chairman hibberd previously worked for the massachusetts department of environmental protection. we welcome you, sir. whenever you're ready, please begin. >> i want to thank members of the committee for inviting me here today to discuss the topic. i want to thank you all for your leadership in addressing our energy challenges and global climate change and for your wisdom in addressing both at the same time in the legislation. we support your efforts and encourage congress to have the legislation expeditiously. on transmission, we think that ace has got the transmission planning and citing question exactly right. in its current form, it presents a measured and sensitive approach that supports the continued and vital primary role in state and regional resource plan and efforts and it expands the role of ferc to regional planning across a broader geographical footprint and most importantly t does so without jeopardizing the critically important role in competition in the wholesale energy markets. in cont

hibberd, thank you, mr. chairman. i would just say that certainly from our perspective in the commonwealth, we completely agree with the goals of the aces legislation. we absolutely have to address the carbon issue and we have to address it now. what i would urge you to consider from the standpoint of transmission is to try to retain the competitive market structure that delivers benefits to our rate payers in the designs that you implement going forward. the carbon cap that provides a value or cost of additional marginal costs associated for purchase for fossil-generated resources that provides additional revenues to renewable resource should provide the financial incentive needed to get renewables and the associated transmission built and that we want to maintain the distinction between who's responsible for paying for transmission if it's a generating facility and who is responsible if it's needed for -- >> number one, define the goals that we need to be with the transmission grid. >> number two, define a state-led

hibberd and others talk about what the impact would be of the waxman bill on the marketplace. the signal will be sent to move away from carbon-producing electrical generation. there will be a national renewable electricity standard now as a result encompassing additional 20 states and he largely believes that that's going to now force states on a regional basis because of these national goals to reach accommodation on these new lines and that the federal government will be less needed in the future. perhaps with the exception of the federal lands issue to resolve these issues. what is your response to that -- because we are trying to create a market-based response, and i'll just give you an analogous situation and perhaps you can reflect upon it. after we passed the 1996 telecommunications act, all of a sudden there was an explosion of broadband deployment across the country. telephone companies, cable companies and others who had been telling the local pucs, it's not, in fact, cost effective to be deploying fiber optic and broadband technology and we're now in a mad race to d