[BETA] Fortnightly

A motley assortment of naysayers and recalcitrants continue to oppose competitive electricity markets around the world. But the alternative to markets is centralized command economics—a discredited concept that deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history.

The ability to provide reliable capacity is becoming both riskier and more costly to society and investors alike.

Beginning around June 2005, prices in the PJM day-ahead locational market pricing energy markets and real-time pricing markets rose precipitously. Based on publicly available information, our study concludes that these price increases are not fully explained by higher loads and higher commodity fuel prices. Could higher energy prices be the result of the inappropriate exercise of market power rather than the appropriate result of market dynamics operating in the presence of scarcity?

Why do energy merchants or those utilities with merchant power divisions obsess over “selling” their upside? These companies feel compelled to show steady, predictable profit streams to both the street and their stakeholders, despite the fact that they operate within one of the most volatile markets in the world. Typically, their method of achieving earnings consistency centers on the execution of complicated purchase and sales agreements that effectively lock in the price of fuel and electricity. Don’t these contracts really just eliminate the potential positive return an energy merchant strives to achieve in the first place?

New regulations from FERC to prevent energy industry market manipulation take deep root in securities industry law. Modeled in part on the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act), the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT) outlaws direct or indirect use or employment of manipulative or deceptive devices or contrivances in energy industries FERC regulates under the Natural Gas Act (NGA), the Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 (NGPA), and the Federal Power Act (FPA).