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"The money is going out the door as soon as I can get it in," he said. "We've seen natural gas shoot up nearly 120 percent since this time last year."
The 28 percent rate increase is not a profit increase for Entergy, Fisackerly said, but a "dollar-for-dollar pass through" for the company's projected energy costs in the third quarter.
"By law, we cannot profit off the fuel we use to create energy," Fisackerly said. "We didn't just throw this increase out there - we didn't have a choice. We are required under the law to produce dependable power."
Rates are adjusted every quarter, Fisackerly said, and first quarter costs are recovered in the third quarter; second in the fourth.
He said another fuel adjustment would be filed on Aug. 15. It is too early to tell whether the rates will increase or decrease with the adjustment, he said.
Natural gas is currently $9 per MMBTU (metric million British thermal unit), Fisackerly said, down from $13 per MMBTU earlier this month. If the price stays at $9 or continues to drop, it would help alleviate the rate increase. However, Entergy has yet to recover increased natural gas costs incurred during the second quarter.
"When we came into 2008, everyone projected $8 - $10 natural gas, but it went way above $10," he said. "If I could get down below $10 and stay there for a while, it would definitely help reduce my costs. But all I need is a ruptured fuel line, a storm in the Gulf [of Mexico] or a continued heat wave to drive prices back up."
Fisackerly cited several reasons for the increased price of natural gas, such as the coldest winter in five years, a 64 percent increase in natural gas exports to Mexico, a 60 percent decline in U.S. imports of liquefied natural gas and a 5 percent decline in Canada of natural gas imports.
Complicating matters of energy supply is the fact that America as a whole is using more electricity, Fisackerly said. He said plasma TVs use three times the power of normal TVs, and it would require three of Entergy's Grand Gulf nuclear stations to simultaneously power the 10 million Sony Playstation 3s that have been sold in the U.S.
Fisackerly called for several plans to alleviate the nation's energy crisis, such as the development of a comprehensive national energy plan, region-specific use of various forms of energy and the development of nuclear power.
"Environmental policies in the early 1970s made it cost prohibitive to build more coal plants and cost overruns in the 1970s and 1980s made us abandon nuclear power," he said. "We had to look for other sources, and natural gas was the perfect choice - it was plentiful, cheap and clean.
"But because of our lack of an energy policy, everyone ran to natural gas," Fisackerly continued. "The government needs to implement a stable plan that can transcend market conditions and diversify our fuel needs."
Fisackerly advocated the use of solar and wind energy in regions where the sources would be viable, like solar energy on the West Coast and wind energy in the Midwest, leaving alternatives like natural gas and coal in areas where those sources would not be feasible, like the Southeast.
"Wind and solar power would not make sense in the Southeast, but would make tremendous sense in the Midwest or the West Coast," he said.
Fisackerly said a long-term solution to the nation's energy crisis should be a reinvigorated approach to the construction of nuclear power stations. Entergy is currently working toward building a second such station at Grand Gulf, though the earliest it could come online would be 2020, he said, and the company is not yet certain if it will go forward with the plan.
"We're moving as fast as we can," Fisackerly said.
Fisackerly said it would take the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission four years to review the 13,000-page application filed by Entergy, but NRC representatives have already visited Grand Gulf to gather information.
Another factor slowing the process is the ongoing development of General Electric's new Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor, which Entergy plans to use in any new nuclear power station, Fisackerly said.
"We haven't built a nuclear station in 30 years, and we don't have the supply chain, the trained workforce or the vendors in place," he said. "Until these questions are answered, we won't know what the costs are, and we have to know what the costs are to make decisions in the best interest of our customers."
