Compete Issue Briefs

COMPETE Coalition comments in response to Ohio Governor Kasich’s call for ideas on energy policies that are environmentally responsible and foster Ohio’s economic competitiveness and job creation.

The COMPETE Coalition supports well-structured electricity markets that promote innovation and produce measurable consumer benefits. Whether at the wholesale or retail level, competitive markets encourage the innovative solutions required to meet America's electricity needs and environmental objectives. Competitive markets encourage price transparency and economic investments where investors, not ratepayers, appropriately bear the financial risk.
 

Testimony of Susan F. Tierney, Ph.D. on behalf of The COMPETE Coalition before the New Jersey BPU, October 14, 2011

See attached files
 

Fourteen New Jersey businesses urge Governor Christie to support competitive electricity markets and encourage the state not to shift away from the very successful competitive market embraced over the past decade.

Competitive electricity markets are driving innovation, stimulating new investment, and delivering customer choice across North America, concludes the 2010 Annual Baseline Assessment of Choice in Canada and the United States (ABACCUS). The annual study from Distributed Energy Financial Group finds customer choice thriving because well-structured electricity markets have introduced new products and services which are unavailable in monopoly utility markets.
 
ABACCUS finds many innovative products and services available to customers in these markets, including the ability to lock in prices for a year or more, indexed energy prices, clean energy generation, distributed power generation, greater reliability and the opportunity to participate in bulk power markets.
 

Chairman Jon Wellinghoff (D)
“Membership in organized regional power markets produces important benefits for consumers, such as by expanding electricity supply options through increased access to renewable energy resources and improving operating performance.” 

Organized competitive electricity markets provide distinct advantages to wind energy and stimulate innovative energy storage technologies, especially when compared to monopoly markets. This theme was explored during a Capitol Hill policy briefing featuring the COMPETE Coalition, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), and New York Independent System Operator (NYISO).
 
The briefing also featured the release of a joint statement from COMPETE and AWEA supporting competitive wholesale electricity markets.
 
Stimulating Wind Energy in Competitive Markets

The American Wind Energy Association and the COMPETE Coalition are united in their support of well-structured competitive wholesale electricity markets. Such markets are the best way to ensure an efficient and adequate supply of electricity and to meet the nation’s economic, energy and environmental challenges.
 
Currently, the organized wholesale markets operated by the RTOs and ISOs best exemplify well-structured electricity markets. Those markets are keeping consumer prices affordable, improving efficiency, fostering innovation, attracting new resources including demand response, and providing the products and services customers want. 
 

Our nation faces significant energy and environmental policy challenges. The organized markets operated by the Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs) are the best way to assure an efficient and adequate supply of electricity and to meet the nation’s current and future energy and environmental needs. RTOs and ISOs are delivering benefits today in the following areas:

America must take aggressive action to tackle our energy challenges, and the electric power industry is uniquely situated to lead the way. The COMPETE Coalition is dedicated to ensuring that policymakers at all levels recognize that well-structured organized electricity markets are essential. The RTOs and ISOs are providing the level playing field, renewable generation, demand resources, customer tools and efficient markets that are proving to be essential in achieving these goals and holding down costs to consumers along the way.