Download or read book The U S Electricity Industry After 20 Years of Restructuring written by Severin Borenstein and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the 1990s, most electricity customers in the U.S. were served by regulated, vertically-integrated, monopoly utilities that handled electricity generation, transmission, local distribution and billing/collections. Regulators set retail electricity prices to allow the utility to recover its prudently incurred costs, a process known as cost-of-service regulation. During the 1990s, this model was disrupted in many states by "electricity restructuring," a term used to describe legal changes that allowed both non-utility generators to sell electricity to utilities -- displacing the utility generation function -- and/or "retail service providers" to buy electricity from generators and sell to end-use customers -- displacing the utility procurement and billing functions. We review the original economic arguments for electricity restructuring, the potential winners and losers from these changes, and what has actually happened in the subsequent years. We argue that the greatest political motivation for restructuring was rent shifting, not efficiency improvements, and that this explanation is supported by observed waxing and waning of political enthusiasm for electricity reform. While electricity restructuring has brought significant efficiency improvements in generation, it has generally been viewed as a disappointment because the price-reduction promises made by some advocates were based on politically-unsustainable rent transfers. In reality, the electricity rate changes since restructuring have been driven more by exogenous factors -- such as generation technology advances and natural gas price fluctuations -- than by the effects of restructuring. We argue that a similar dynamic underpins the current political momentum behind distributed generation (primarily rooftop solar PV) which remains costly from a societal viewpoint, but privately economic due to the rent transfers it enables.
Download or read book The U S Electricity Industry After 20 Years of Restructuring written by Severin Borenstein and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prior to the 1990s, most electricity customers in the U.S. were served by regulated, vertically-integrated, monopoly utilities that handled electricity generation, transmission, local distribution and billing/collections. Regulators set retail electricity prices to allow the utility to recover its prudently incurred costs, a process known as cost-of-service regulation. During the 1990s, this model was disrupted in many states by "electricity restructuring," a term used to describe legal changes that allowed both non-utility generators to sell electricity to utilities -- displacing the utility generation function -- and/or "retail service providers" to buy electricity from generators and sell to end-use customers -- displacing the utility procurement and billing functions. We review the original economic arguments for electricity restructuring, the potential winners and losers from these changes, and what has actually happened in the subsequent years. We argue that the greatest political motivation for restructuring was rent shifting, not efficiency improvements, and that this explanation is supported by observed waxing and waning of political enthusiasm for electricity reform. While electricity restructuring has brought significant efficiency improvements in generation, it has generally been viewed as a disappointment because the price-reduction promises made by some advocates were based on politically-unsustainable rent transfers. In reality, the electricity rate changes since restructuring have been driven more by exogenous factors -- such as generation technology advances and natural gas price fluctuations -- than by the effects of restructuring. We argue that a similar dynamic underpins the current political momentum behind distributed generation (primarily rooftop solar PV) which remains costly from a societal viewpoint, but privately economic due to the rent transfers it enables.
Download or read book A Shock to the System written by Timothy J. Brennan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Shock to the System is a guide to the decisions that will be faced by electricity providers, customers, and policymakers. Produced by a team of analysts at Resources for the Future, this concise and balanced work provides background necessary to understand the increasing role of competition in electricity markets. The authors introduce important concepts and terminology, and offer the history of public policy regarding electricity. They identify the significant proposals for implementing competition, and examine the potential consequences for regulation, industry structure, cost recovery, and the environment.
Download or read book Electricity Restructuring written by Laura Lynne Kiesling and published by A E I Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores how Texas's groundbreaking program of electricity restructuring has become a model for truly competitive energy markets in the United States. The authors contend that restructuring in Texas has been successful because the industry is free from federal over...
Download or read book Electricity Deregulation written by James M. Griffin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-11-15 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The electricity market has experienced enormous setbacks in delivering on the promise of deregulation. In theory, deregulating the electricity market would increase the efficiency of the industry by producing electricity at lower costs and passing those cost savings on to customers. As Electricity Deregulation shows, successful deregulation is possible, although it is by no means a hands-off process—in fact, it requires a substantial amount of design and regulatory oversight. This collection brings together leading experts from academia, government, and big business to discuss the lessons learned from experiences such as California's market meltdown as well as the ill-conceived policy choices that contributed to those failures. More importantly, the essays that comprise Electricity Deregulation offer a number of innovative prescriptions for the successful design of deregulated electricity markets. Written with economists and professionals associated with each of the network industries in mind, this comprehensive volume provides a timely and astute deliberation on the many risks and rewards of electricity deregulation.
Download or read book Three Essays on U S Electricity Restructuring written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The traditional structure of the electricity sector in the U.S. has been that of large vertically integrated companies with sole responsibility for distributing power to end users within a franchise area. The restructuring of this sector that has occurred in the past 10-20 years has profoundly altered this picture. This dissertation examines three aspects of that restructuring process. First chapter of my dissertation investigates the impacts of divestitures of generation, an important part of the process of restructuring, on the efficiency of distribution systems. We find that while all divestitures as a group do not significantly affect distribution efficiency, those mandated by state public utility commissions have resulted in large and statistically significant adverse effects on distribution efficiency. Second chapter of my dissertation explores whether independent system operator (ISO) formation in New York has led to operating efficiencies at the unit and the system level. ISOs oversee the centralized management of the grid and the energy market and are expected to promote more efficient power generation. We test these efficiencies focusing on the generation units in New York ISO region from 1998 to 2004 and find that the NYISO formation has introduced limited efficiencies at the unit and the system level. Restructuring in the electricity industry has spawned a new wave of mergers, both raising questions and providing opportunities to examine these mergers. Third chapter of my dissertation investigates the drivers of electric utility mergers consummated between 1992 and 2004. My results provide support for disturbance theory of mergers, size hypothesis, and inefficient management hypothesis as drivers of electric utility mergers. I also find that the adjacency of the service territories is the most noteworthy determinant of the pairings between IOUs.
Download or read book Markets for Power written by Paul L. Joskow and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1988-08-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely study evaluates four generic proposals for allowing free market forces toreplace government regulation in the electric power industry and concludes that none of thederegulation alternatives considered represents a panacea for the performance failures associatedwith things as they are now. It proposes a balanced program of regulatory reform and deregulationthat promises to improve industry performance in the short run, resolve uncertainties about thecosts and benefits of deregulation, and positions the industry for more extensive deregulation inthe long run should interim experimentation with deregulation, structural, and regulatory reformsmake it desirable.The book integrates modern microeconomic theory with a comprehensive analysis ofthe economic, technical, and institutional characteristics of modern electrical power systems. Itemphasizes that casual analogies to successful deregulation efforts in other sectors of the economyare an inadequate and potentially misleading basis for public policy in the electric power industry,which has economic and technical characteristics that are quite different from those in otherderegulated industries.Paul L. Joskow is Professor of Economics at MIT, author of ControllingHospital Costs (MIT Press 1981) and coauthor with Martin L. Baughman and Dilip P. Kamat of ElectricPower in the United States (MIT Press 1979). Richard Schmalensee, also at MIT, is Professor ofApplied Economics, author of The Economics of Advertising and The Control of Natural Monopolies, andeditor of The MIT Press Series, Regulation of Economic Activity.
Download or read book Electricity Restructuring in the United States written by Steve Isser and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-16 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The electric utility industry in the US is technologically complex, and its structure as a classic network industry makes it intricate in business terms as well, so deregulation of such a complicated industry was a particularly detailed process. Steve Isser provides a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the history of the transformation of this complex industry from the 1978 Energy Policy Act to the present, covering the economic, legal, regulatory, and political issues and controversies in the transition from regulated utilities to competitive electricity markets. The book is a multidisciplinary study that includes a comprehensive review of the economic literature on electricity markets, the political environment of electricity policymaking, administrative and regulatory rulemaking, and the federal case law that restrained state and federal regulation of electricity. Isser offers a valuable case study of the pitfalls and problems associated with the deregulation of a complex network industry.
Download or read book Electricity Restructuring written by John Carlson and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five essays examine issues of restructuring of electricity markets and regulations. The authors generally acknowledge that total deregulation could have disastrous consequences and promote a hybrid restructuring that takes into account certain concerns related to air pollution and consumer rights. Also included are abstracts of 18 journal papers on the same topic. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Deregulation Innovation and Market Liberalization written by L. Lynne Kiesling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-09-03 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book delves into regulatory and technological change affecting the electricity industry and provides a previously unexplored synthesis of new institutional economics, experimental economics, evolutionary economics, and network theory.
Download or read book Essays on the Effect of Regulatory Restructuring in the Electricity Industry on Independent Power Production written by Jun Ishii and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Special Issue on Restructuring in the U S Electricity Industry written by Diana L. Moss and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The California Electricity Crisis written by Christopher Weare and published by Public Policy Instit. of CA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms written by Richard B. Freeman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, globalization and the expansion of information technologies have reshaped managerial practices, forcing multinational firms to adjust business practices to different environments and domestic companies to adjust to their foreign competitors. In International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms, a distinguished group of contributors examines the phenomenon of widespread differences in managerial practices across firms, establishments within firms, and countries. This volume brings together eight studies that combine qualitative and quantitative insider analysis of business practices such as the use of teams, incentive pay, lean manufacturing, and quality control, revealing the elements that determine which practices are adopted and why. International Differences in the Business Practices and Productivity of Firms offers a much-needed model for measuring the productivity and performance of international firms in a fast-paced global economy.
Download or read book Special Issue on Restructuring in the U S Electricity Industry written by and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Vertical Integration and the Restructuring of the U S Electricity Industry written by Robert J. Michaels and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debates on restructuring of the U.S. electricity industry are often about the degree to which market relationships should replace transactions that formerly took place within regulated, vertically integrated utilities. Markets for the purchase of energy by vertically unintegrated distribution utilities are clearly feasible, but vertical deintegration of existing systems may entail foregoing some operational and reliability benefits that are important in light of electricity's unique characteristics. Research and policy on restructuring have almost totally disregarded a large econometric literature on the savings from vertical integration. At the same time, policy makers have accepted the results of flawed studies that purport to estimate the benefits of switching to a market regime. A review of California's restructuring history shows that vertical integration was viewed primarily as a tool that incumbent utilities might use to perpetuate their market power. The disregard of its benefits led to questionable divestitures that produced superficially competitive market structures, and to the institution of Independent System Operators whose costs have yet to be compared to their benefits.
Download or read book The Power of Change written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electricity, supplied reliably and affordably, is foundational to the U.S. economy and is utterly indispensable to modern society. However, emissions resulting from many forms of electricity generation create environmental risks that could have significant negative economic, security, and human health consequences. Large-scale installation of cleaner power generation has been generally hampered because greener technologies are more expensive than the technologies that currently produce most of our power. Rather than trade affordability and reliability for low emissions, is there a way to balance all three? The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies considers how to speed up innovations that would dramatically improve the performance and lower the cost of currently available technologies while also developing new advanced cleaner energy technologies. According to this report, there is an opportunity for the United States to continue to lead in the pursuit of increasingly clean, more efficient electricity through innovation in advanced technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies makes the case that America's advantagesâ€"world-class universities and national laboratories, a vibrant private sector, and innovative states, cities, and regions that are free to experiment with a variety of public policy approachesâ€"position the United States to create and lead a new clean energy revolution. This study focuses on five paths to accelerate the market adoption of increasing clean energy and efficiency technologies: (1) expanding the portfolio of cleaner energy technology options; (2) leveraging the advantages of energy efficiency; (3) facilitating the development of increasing clean technologies, including renewables, nuclear, and cleaner fossil; (4) improving the existing technologies, systems, and infrastructure; and (5) leveling the playing field for cleaner energy technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies is a call for leadership to transform the United States energy sector in order to both mitigate the risks of greenhouse gas and other pollutants and to spur future economic growth. This study's focus on science, technology, and economic policy makes it a valuable resource to guide support that produces innovation to meet energy challenges now and for the future.
