Electricity Deregulation: Choices and Challenges
比较了美国和英国电力自由化的不同起点与挑战，指出美国投资者所有的公用事业面临搁浅资产补偿难题，而自由化带来的成本节约有限且多被生产者获取。
Electricity liberalisation started from a very different position in the US than elsewhere. The US had evolved a system of regulated investor‐owned utilities. Elsewhere the electricity supply industry (ESI) was typically vertically integrated under public ownership. Restructuring and privatising state‐owned utilities is simpler as there are no prior contractual commitments to future revenue flows. There are no obvious constraints on the nature and extent of restructuring, other than interest group opposition. Where electricity was generated by expensive fuels, inefficient plant and management, liberalisation allowed consumer prices to fall. Early successes encouraged support from those anxious whether the lights would remain on and prices rise. Contrast this with the US where investor‐owned utilities had irretrievably sunk sizable investments under a constitutionally guaranteed fair return. Pressure for liberalisation came from consumers in states where the electricity price exceeded the cost of new generation. The challenge was to compensate utilities for stranded assets and deliver lower consumer prices. The few ex post cost–benefit studies of liberalisation suggest this would be hard. Newbery and Pollitt (1997) found that restructuring and privatising the CEGB delivered sustainable unit cost reductions of 6%. Wolfram’s chapter observes that difference between efficient and average regulated US utilities was 10–15% (not necessarily all achievable from liberalisation). However, Pollitt (1999) found that privatising the Scottish companies as largely unchanged vertically integrated utilities produced no net gains. Gains are modest, and likely to be captured by producers. Devising a politically sustainable reform in an already privately owned ESI is particularly challenging. While the UK story has been often told, the more challenging US liberalisation is scattered across journal articles, making this volume of largely US experience valuable.