EDF

In an op-ed this week, leading economists with MIT and Harvard urged policymakers not to “demonize” market-based policies to achieve national environmental and energy goals. The economists underscore the benefits of using market forces to bring about good policy outcomes in a least-cost manner, echoing COMPETE’s support for markets and market-based climate-change policies in a joint position paper with the Environmental Defense Fund.

While Congress and the Obama administration consider how to reduce greenhouse emissions and stimulate clean energy innovation, COMPETE urges all stakeholders involved in climate legislation talks to remember the power of a market-based approach.
 
Established results tell the tale – competitive markets offer the best path forward to achieve America’s energy needs and environmental objectives. In the Northeast, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which spans parts of two organized competitive electricity markets, is the first mandatory, market-based CO2 emissions reduction program in the U.S. – and it has been working successfully for several years.
 
By phasing in an approach to emissions reductions, set against an established cap, RGGI has provided predictable market signals, regulatory certainty businesses can operate against, and much-needed revenue for participating states. Best of all, the system is supported by the consumers it serves.

Consumers in New England strongly support the power of competitive markets to stimulate investment in clean energy and combat global warming, an annual survey by the New England Energy Alliance (NEAA) demonstrates.
 

Organized competitive markets create an effective mechanism to stimulate technological innovations and achieve federal emissions reductions goals. Promoting innovative solutions and market approaches delivers economic and environmental benefits to consumers.

A proposal being developed in the U.S. Senate would use a market-based approach to limiting carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector. While drumming up support for the tri-partisan bill, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) said that markets unleash “ingenuity” and send the proper price signals for investment. COMPETE couldn’t agree more, as outlined in a joint statement with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).

The COMPETE Coalition has long advocated competition in electricity as integral to unlocking technology innovation, development and jobs growth - as we all experienced when competition was injected into telecommunications and other formerly monopoly industry sectors. So we are especially enthusiastic when other voices join us in underscoring this important policy point, as when the Environmental Defense Fund joined us in highlighting the link between competition, technology innovation and environmental benefits.

Now NDN, an influential Democratic policy think tank, has released a comprehensive report pointing to competition in our nation's electricity markets as the launching pad for innovation, such as smart grid technologies and greater development of renewable energy. The report, Electricity 2.0, finds that monopoly protections and hybrid competition in a state-by-state patchwork thwart market entry of new clean energy generation and technologies. Instead, NDN advocates an "Open Energy Network" that would allow competition to provide environmental, economic and technological benefits for the entire country.