Over the holidays, we stumbled across two good conversations on the Suncast podcast that we wanted to share with you. The first one looks at deregulating state electricity markets and the second on empowering consumers with the right to purchase clean energy.
At the Energy Choice Coalition, we believe competition is at the core of our free-market system and that a well-functioning market is driven by consumer choice. Competitive markets produce the most efficient results in our economy, providing lower costs and a greater array of choices for consumers compared to government regulation. We recently released a report that shows competition in electricity markets also leads to reduced carbon emissions.
Today, more consumers than ever before can choose their electricity providers. However, competition is still not available in all states, and, unfortunately, most of us do not have a choice when it comes to who powers our home. We can choose our cell service carriers, our internet providers, or which airline will take us from point A to point B, but that same choice is not available to most of us when it comes to what entity powers our home. In this podcast, Jesson Bradshaw of Energy Ogre does a good job breaking down what deregulated markets can provide to communities. As Jesson describes it, deregulation is the loosening up of some of the rules so that companies can compete against each other, resulting in innovation and lower prices for the end-users. We’ve witnessed this with deregulation in other industries, and it’s relevant to the electricity markets today.
In the second podcast, Nathan Jovanelly, of IGS, the largest energy retailer in the U.S., discusses ways to ease the financial burden for families that wouldn’t otherwise have access to solar and other clean energy options. He was a part of a small team within IGS to take on the challenge of making affordable clean energy more inclusive and providing options to low-income families. Given his engineering background and upbringing, he also talks about the importance of creating tech interfaces that are easy to understand and easy to navigate. It’s this type of innovation and investment that removes barriers to access.
We hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen in.