No one seriously believes that students should have to apply to the government for certificates of convenience before they attend college to become engineers, nurses, or teachers, or that laborers should be allowed to recover, by law, their fixed costs of college preparation. Any reasonable observer would say, it should not. Around the country, there are some very efficient producers of electricity. These firms are currently restricted in the ways that they might sell the power they can produce cheaply to consumers who face higher cost producers. The losers are buyers of power who have their choices restricted by regulatory fiat.
Competition is a better watchdog.
There is considerable under-used capacity in the generation and transmission capital stock of the United States. We estimate that it is possible to produce at least 13 percent additional output yearly and possibly as much as 25 percent additional power without adding one new generator or one new transmission wire. This capacity can be put to use by more flexible pricing plans that will emerge via competition. There is considerable variation in the demand for electricity from month to month, but regulations do not allow price to vary along with this ebb and flow. Competition will allow price to adjust to various demand conditions.