PennFuture

A major Pennsylvania environmental group has endorsed competition’s benefits, just as rate caps expired across the state and millions of consumers gained the ability to shop for their electricity on January 1. PennFuture’s report, “Consumers Win: A Decade of Electricity Competition,” touts the success of competition, saying “the benefits to Pennsylvania ratepayers cannot be disputed.”
 

Beware of organized competitive electricity market critics who claim to speak for all consumers. They certainly do not speak for the growing contingent of COMPETE customer members who are helping communicate the economic and environmental benefits, and the technological innovation, that competition in electricity is delivering.

During a recent conference sponsored by Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future (PennFuture), two representatives of COMPETE’s roster of customer members, manufacturer Leggett & Platt and retailer Wal-Mart, discussed how electricity competition saves money for consumers, stimulates renewable energy, and encourages innovation.

Hyperbole and half-truths have clouded the picture of Pennsylvania’s expiring rate caps and ignore the fact that retail electric competition has saved that state’s consumers billions, according to a recent op-ed by Jan Jarrett of PennFuture. Scary stories, she says, are becoming urban legends.

Responding to critics who argue consumers should return to monopoly control of electric markets, Jarrett points out that restructured power markets have paid dividends to much of the state. Beyond the fact that state electric rates are now 5 percent lower than the national average (compared to 15 percent above the national average before competition), renewable wind power generation and energy conservation innovations have boomed in Pennsylvania’s organized market –a direct benefit of competition.

It’s a human trait to look back on the past as a time when things were better, John Hanger, Secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection, told a gathering in Harrisburg last week.  But when it comes to monopoly regulation of the state’s electric utilities, “I don’t look back with fondness to how that system was working,” said Hanger, a keynote speaker at an event sponsored by Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future that highlighted the economic and environmental benefits for consumers from electricity competition. Hanger headed the environmental group, also known as PennFuture, before becoming the state’s top environmental regulator, and was a member of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission in the 1990s.

PennFuture, Pennsylvania’s leading conservation organization, is sponsoring a day-long event in Harrisburg on December 3 to examine the environmental and economic benefits obtained through competitive electricity markets.

The conference – Competitive Electricity Markets: Benefits for Consumers and the Environment – will address innovative energy efficiency and demand response programs that flourish in the state’s competitive market — saving consumers money and reducing electricity consumption. The event also will explore the significant impact of renewable energy, especially wind energy that has prospered within Pennsylvania’s competitive market structure.