Ohio's energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) requires regulated utilities to meet a schedule of reductions (above federal requirements) in customer energy consumption that cumulate to 22 percent by 2025. Utilities are to comply with these purely political requirements by devising programs...

Concern over emissions and climate change has led over half of the states to enact "renewable portfolio standard" legislation requiring regulated electric utilities to obtain some fraction of their power requirements from sources defined as "renewable." Legislation to institute a federal RPS may...

Economists have long recognized that certainty of contract is essential to a healthy economy. Long-term forward contracts, in particular, help reduce financial risk. Those contracts can only accomplish that goal, however, if parties know the contracts will be enforced. From an economic and...

Over their two years of existence since deregulation began, the electricity markets operated by the California Power Exchange [PX] and Independent System Operator [ISO] have often seen wide price fluctuations and numerous episodes of prices clearly above marginal costs of generation. Both...

Competitive markets for the production of electricity are growing, but the facilities that transmit and distribute it are still monopolies. To foster competition in transmission, FERC has set standards for forming regional transmission organizations. The form of those organizations is the...

Restructuring of wholesale electricity markets in the U.S. has brought new institutions known as Regional Transmission Organizations (RTO) and Market Monitoring Institutions (MMI) that oversee competition in the energy markets that they operate. Both regulators and external observers have viewed...

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...