In the time available to me, I would like to summarize for you the Pennsylvania experience with electricity deregulation. Pennsylvania's story has been a success story. It is anticipated that 36,000 new jobs will be created in Pennsylvania as a result of competition by the end of 2004. I assure you that so long as Pennsylvania continues on its present course, it will not. The reliability of our electric system is sound.
Retail competition works.
Well thought out, collaborative industry restructuring as embodied in the Electric Competition Act passed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly, has assured the maintenance of system reliability and the viability of customer choice. In preparing my comments for today, I was asked to outline a comparison and contrast of the situations in Pennsylvania versus California. Both programs tried to reach the same goal of customer choice and electric generation competition. However, there are many differences between our two restructuring efforts and the consequences of those efforts. Pennsylvania started competition with a generation surplus and an adequate, reliable transmission infrastructure, conditions that prevail to this day.