The National Energy Marketers Association (NEM) is a national, non-profit trade association representing wholesale and retail marketers of energy, telecom and financial-related products, services, information and related technologies throughout the United States, Canada and the U.K. NEM's Membership includes wholesale and retail suppliers and consumers of electricity and natural gas, independent power producers, suppliers of distributed generation, energy brokers, power traders, and electronic trading exchanges, advanced metering and load management firms, billing and information technology providers, credit, risk management and financial services firms, software developers, clean coal technology firms, energy-related telecom, as well as broadband internet companies.

This regionally diverse, broad-based coalition of energy, financial services and technology firms has come together under NEM's auspices to forge consensus and to help resolve as many issues as possible that would delay competition. NEM members urge lawmakers and regulators to implement:

* Laws and regulations that open markets for natural gas, electricity and related products, services, information and technology in a competitively neutral fashion;

* Rates, tariffs, taxes and operating procedures that unbundle competitive services from monopoly services and encourage true competition on the basis of price, quality of service and provision of value-added services;

* Market designs and standards which bring suppliers and consumers together at the lowest possible cost; 

* Accounting and disclosure standards to promote the proper valuation of energy assets, equity securities and forward energy contracts, including derivatives; and .

* Policies that encourage investments in new technologies, including the integration of energy, telecommunications and Internet services to lower the cost of energy and related services.