Geoffrey Lawrence, a senior policy fellow at Reason Foundation, makes a sound argument for reforming California’s PG&E electricity market to allow greater competition and consumer choice in the wake of the utility’s failure to maintain infrastructure and avoid routine power outages and rolling blackouts. The piece is well worth a read:
“The state’s regulated monopoly approach has failed, resulting in tragic deaths, massive property damage, not to mention some of the highest energy prices in the nation, and unreliable service.
“Texas offers an interesting counterpoint. In 1999, Texas launched an effort to bring competition and consumer choice to its electricity market. Since that time, rates in its competitive market have declined by 31 percent and Texans now have access to some of the cheapest electricity in the country. For comparison, according to the most recent data from the US Energy Information Administration, the price per kilowatt-hour across all sectors is $0.09 in Texas and $0.19 in California.
“Additionally, as competition increased in its electricity market, Texas also became a leader in renewable energy. “Texas continues to dominate the nation’s wind energy production, adding far more generating capacity than any other state last year and having more installed wind power capacity than all but five countries in the world,” the Houston Chronicle reported last year.”
Read the full piece at Reason.org.