Americans are used to choosing among competing firms for goods and services. But not for electricity. The world has changed, however. Over the past two decades, controls were lifted or reduced in the airline, banking, broadcasting, energy, rail, telecommunications and trucking industries. Now states have begun to apply the same principle to power generation.
Deregulation obviously means ending the status of investor-owned utilities as protected monopolies.
But that is not enough to level the playing field. IOUs currently face competition from public and quasi-public entities with even greater advantages. The national government produces electricity through the Tennessee Valley Authority and five regional power marketing administrations, and provides municipalities and co-ops preferential access to that power. All of the federal enterprises should also be privatized. At the very least, Congress should begin selling individual dams and plants, ending new taxpayer subsidies, and charging market prices for federal power.