The market, not the government, should make energy choices

Journal Article · · Cogeneration and Competitive Power Journal; (United States)

OSTI ID:6905376

Bradley, Jr, R L ^[1]

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1. Inst. for Energy, Houston, TX (United States)

This article on energy choices and market decision making has direct implications for energy policy. If voluntary choices in a free-market setting result in efficient outcomes, many current energy policies based on taxation, subsidies, and regulation can be critically questioned. In the United States today, energy policy is market oriented to the extent that the major interventions of decades past--price and allocation controls, oil tariffs and quotas, and oil-state market-demand proration--are largely absent. But few, whether friend or foe, would say that a free-market energy policy is in place. The domestic energy market is highly politicized with a blanket of lesser but important interventions. To the market-oriented economist, the Energy Policy Act is a constellation of energy and environmental regulatory minutiae and pork for all energy sources and technologies. With few exceptions, it retained the worst and deleted the best of the Bush administration's initial February 1991 white paper, National Energy Strategy: Powerful Ideas for America. It is a return, sans price and allocation controls, to Carter-style mandatory conservation. The paper discusses the lessons of history, the miracle of the market, energy conservation and DSM, electric generation surcharges, and market energy choices that have succeeded and government energy choices that have not.

• OSTI ID: 6905376
• Journal Information: Cogeneration and Competitive Power Journal; (United States), Journal Name: Cogeneration and Competitive Power Journal; (United States) Vol. 9:4; ISSN CCPJE8; ISSN 1066-8683
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
293000* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Policy
Legislation
& Regulation
DECISION MAKING
ECONOMIC POLICY
ENERGY POLICY
ENERGY SOURCES
EVALUATION
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
HISTORICAL ASPECTS
LOAD MANAGEMENT
MANAGEMENT
MARKET
NATIONAL ENERGY PLANS
POWER GENERATION
SUPPLY AND DEMAND
US NATIONAL ENERGY PLAN