California Energy Regulation

Lynne Kiesling bemoans electricity regulation policy in California.

[The original deregulation effort] was much more about freeing up restrictions on trade in wholesale electricity markets, although it did a pathetic job of that, requiring buyers and sellers to use the government-created faux market that was the Power Exchange, mandating that they engage only in day-ahead and day-of trades, and maintaining the retail rate caps that stifled the transmission of accurate price signals from the retail market into the wholesale market.

How can anyone call this deregulation? It wasn't, and stop calling it such. Continuing to call California's restructuring "deregulation" does nothing except play into the hands of policymakers who think that central planning and control is necessary for the existence of electricity service, notwithstanding the mountains of international evidence to the contrary.

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