Coalition letter calls on Congress to conduct cost analysis of RTOs amid market expansion debate

The ECC joined several other consumer advocates and pro-market groups on July 8th in calling on Congress to conduct an independent cost-benefit analysis on organized power markets in the United States. Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) were created to increase competition by ensuring fair access for producers and consumers to the transmission system, but their expansion – and even a study of their benefits – has been opposed by traditional vertically integrated utilities. Read the letter led by the ECC, ELCON, and Public Citizen, and signed by the Association of Businesses Advocating for Tariff Equity, Carolina Utility Customers Association, Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions, Conservative Energy Network, Heritage Action for America, Industrial Energy Consumers of Pennsylvania, Louisiana Energy Users Group, and R Street Institute.

How “Market Failure” Arguments Lead to Misguided Policy

Comparing market outcomes to some unattainable and unidentifiable ideal is not useful in a world of imperfect knowledge and government failure. It is far better to compare outcomes from an intervention against actual realistic alternatives. Read more at the Cato Institute.

The Changing Role of Energy in the U.S. Economy

The CSIS Energy Program conducted research, commissioned papers, held a workshop, and developed this report on the changing role of energy in the U.S. economy. The purpose is twofold: (1) improve understanding of how energy impacts the U.S. economy at multiple levels; and (2) evaluate the performance of policies designed to create economic opportunity in the energy sector. Read more at CSIS.

How I Became a Green Republican — and Started Putting Green Ideas into Action

An essay by Trammell S. Crow, President of the Crow Family Foundation and Founder of EarthX. Read the full article at The Bush Center.

What Texas Can Teach America About Advanced Clean Energy

“In order to achieve truly sustainable solutions, we should stop focusing on what was or what is, and shift the conversation to ‘what can be.’” Read more at The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation.

Texas Doesn’t Need Federal Interference With its Electric Grid

“The Texas model of a smartly regulated transmission system is delivering lower cost electricity for Texans — and has for decades.” Read more of the op-ed at the Houston Chronicle.

The Great Divergence in Competitive and Monopoly Electricity Price Trends

One-third of a trillion dollars: That is how much more electricity consumers paid for power in traditional vertical monopoly states over the past decade than if percentage price change trends in those states had been the same as those in electricity choice jurisdictions. This Great Divergence cries out for an explanation. Read more.

Electricity Reform and Retail Pricing in Texas

In this study, we analyze monthly residential billing data for both competitive and noncompetitive market areas in the state of Texas to assess the impact of competition. We find that residential rates in competitive and non-competitive areas of Texas have behaved in a manner that is consistent with economic theory. Read more at The Baker Institute.

Competition at the Grid Edge: Innovation and Antitrust Law in the Electricity Sector

To avoid antitrust liability, I argue that utilities and their regulators should explicitly examine the effects of changes in rates on the growing competition between utilities and distributed energy resources like solar power and battery electric storage. This would also have the benefit of making the rate-setting process more transparent and open to stakeholder input as the increasingly competitive electricity market is transformed. Read more at NYU Environmental Law Journal.

State of Charge: Massachusetts Energy Storage Initiative Study

DOER partnered with Mass Clean Energy Center (MassCEC) for a study of Energy Storage uses in Massachusetts. Read here.

There Is No Free Market for Electricity: Can There Ever Be?

The trade in electricity exists at the intersection of society’s demand for the product’s affordability and constant availability. Obtaining one of these two inverse variables means trading off the other. Yet the electric sector has become still more complicated in recent decades, with the addition of environmental and social considerations from emissions and land use to employment at power plants and mines. Read more at The American Affairs Journal.

A Brief History of Federal Energy Regulations

Large-scale federal intervention into America’s energy markets began in the 1930s and continued through the 1970s. A series of major laws and executive actions sought to control energy prices, restrict competition, and limit imports. Read the full essay at Downsizing the Federal Government.

Reforming Texas Electricity Markets

In the United States and around the world, electricity restructuring is converting regulated monopolies into market regimes. The characteristics of those markets, however, are critical determinants of their performance and remain the subjects of active policy debate. Read more at The Cato Institute.

Give Consumers Choice on Utilities

“Some California utilities are working to turn the clock back to the “good ol’ days” of regulation and guaranteed profits. A bill currently before the Legislature would take hard-won economic power from consumers and return it to monopoly utilities, in the name of increasing investment in the electric power system. This should cause all ratepayers concern.” Read more of this 2004 article at The Reason Foundation.

Rethinking Electricity Restructuring

“The poor track record of restructuring stems from systemic problems inherent in the reforms themselves. We recommend total abandonment of restructuring and a more thoroughgoing embrace of markets than contemplated in current restructuring initiatives.” Read more at The Cato Institute.

Demand, Not Supply

“Immediately following the failure of the electrical network from Ohio to the Northeast Coast, a cascade of rhetoric swept across news networks, blaming the blackout on an antiquated grid with inadequate capacity to carry growing demand for electrical energy.” Read the entire 2003 article at The Reason Foundation.

California’s Electricity Crisis: What’s Going On, Who’s to Blame, and What to Do

The California electricity crisis threatens not only the economic well-being of ratepayers in California but the economic well-being of the United States as well. Unfortunately, the political and economic commentary surrounding the crisis is shedding more heat than light. Read full 2001 article at The Cato Institute.

Powering Up California

Many view California’s electricity crisis as proof that electricity deregulation and indeed deregulation in general does not work. This is wrong. Read the entire 2001 article at The Reason Foundation.

Getting Electricity Deregulation Right: How Other States and Nations Have Avoided California’s Mistakes

Pennsylvania, which passed deregulation legislation at the same time as California, has fully implemented deregulation for all customers of electricity. Pennsylvania’s customers have seen an average price decrease of 30 percent and an increase in service options, including “green,” or renewable, power. Read the entire 2001 article at The Reason Foundation.

The Deregulation of the Electricity Industry: A Primer (1999)

Several states have enacted and others are contemplating changes in the traditional industrial organization of electricity markets. Those changes involve the creation of stock-exchange-like markets for the sale of electricity and the treatment of transmission and distribution lines as “common carriers” that deliver power from any generator to consumers at regulated rates and under regulated conditions. Read more at The Cato Institute.

Congress and Electricity (1998)

In the short run the bulk of the explicit gains from electricity deregulation will probably go to industrial users that alter their operations to take advantage of low off-peak electricity prices. Read more at The Cato Institute.