Competition is good for energy companies and for their customers.
The regulation under which U.S. public utility providers had traditionally functioned was not the equivalent of competition. We believed a free market would allow better allocation of resources, foster innovation and improvement in operating efficiency and more reliably reward good industry performance. As it became clear that the energy industry was moving toward competition in providing wholesale power, Nye, as TXU chairman and CEO, restructured his company to take advantage of pending opportunities and became instrumental in guiding to passage in 1999 the legislation that deregulated Texas public utilities. Deregulation frees companies that generate electric power from restrictions on where they may develop customer bases and from restrictions on growth, while allowing retail power brokers to sell electricity to customers at prices determined by the marketplace. During the transition from deregulation to competition, everything that was nailed down came loose - the change impacted every aspect of the corporation.