Business leaders are monitoring the state legislature’s efforts to end electric deregulation. You can’t deregulate the supply side without competition, and not many companies have rushed in to beat Virginia’s low electric prices since the state passed a restructuring law in 1999.

But how long will Virginia’s overall energy prices remain low — the ninth lowest in the country according to a recent Forbes.com analysis? That’s the thorny question. Rate caps on electric prices charged by Dominion Virginia Power, the state’s largest electric supplier, are scheduled to come off at the end of 2010. If the state doesn’t re-regulate electricity, then some business and consumer groups fear rates will spiral up, much like they have in other states that threw off state control in favor of deregulation only to learn that the market wasn’t robust enough to keep prices competitive.

The state’s Senate and House have approved different versions of legislation that would return some price-setting authority to the State Corporation Commission. Dominion doesn’t want a reprise of the state-regulated monopoly model. It favors a hybrid approach, one that restores some power to the SCC, while giving the energy company more flexibility to respond to a changing market.

While the legislation shakes out in a conference committee, this much is clear: Energy will be one of the defining business issues of the 21st century. Large Fortune 500s, such as General Electric, are already spending big bucks to develop alternative forms of power as demand soars to meet the needs of developing economies such as China’s. Meanwhile, energy companies are scrambling to build a new generation of nuclear, coal and natural gas plants, as well as other alternative and renewable forms of energy.

In the coming months, Virginia Business plans a major package on energy. Stay tuned. 

Tomorrow CNBC’s lively television investment show, “Mad Money with Jim Cramer,” films live from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. U.Va. is one of several campuses Cramer is visiting across the country as part of a back-to-school tour. “I love taking my program out of the studio to college campuses where I can teach and interact with the next generation of traders,” he says. The show will be broadcast from the school’s Abbott Center Auditorium in front of an audience of 400 students. It airs at 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and again at 11 p.m. For the uninitiated, “mad money” refers to funds people have to invest after they pay bills and set aside money for retirement. In other words, whatever is left in the “change jar.”

America is a great place to visit and do business - if you can get into the country. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, overseas travel to the U. S. has dropped 17 percent, causing a loss of $93 billion in economic activity, $15 billion in taxes and 200,000 jobs, a group of travel industry executives said yesterday in Washington, D. C.

What’s needed is a legislative overhaul that would keep security checks in place, but modernize a system that now has wait times of as long as 100 days for travel visas. “America is experiencing a travel crisis, one that hurts our economy, national security and global standing,” said Steven Porter, president of Intercontinental Hotels Group and chairman of the Discover America Partnership.

The partnership’s plan recommends $300 million in new funds to speed up visa processing to 30 days and create a more efficient and welcoming system at major ports of entry, particularly the 12 airports (including Dulles-Washington International in Northern Virginia) where 80 percent of the country’s international visitors arrive. The funds, said the executives, could largely be raised through travel user fees.

“This is about our image, our vitality and our world competitiveness,” Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, told members of the travel industry during his keynote address at the annual luncheon of the Travel Industry Association. For more information on the plan, click here. 

Small businesses continue to be an important part of Virginia’s economy. These entrepreneurial ventures provide jobs, creative services and products, and some grow to be leaders in their industries.

In our annual salute to small businesses, Virginia Business honored four regional winners of our Small Business Success Story competition at a luncheon yesterday at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. We profile the winners in our February issue. The overall state winner (hint: a Southwest Virginia company that will turn your head in a nanosecond) appears on the cover.

Less than a week after Smithfield Foods said it would phase out confinement crates for pregnant pigs, a second major pig producer plans to follow suit. Over the next decade Maple Leaf Foods Inc., Canada’s largest pig producer, says it will eliminate the crates for pregnant sows and convert to a group housing system.

The Humane Society of the United States hails the actions by the largest pig producers in the U.S. and Canada as nothing less than “an animal welfare revolution in the North American pork industry” because it means an end to the use of “these cruel crates,” the society said in a statement.