There is this "cowboy" image of America that is totally wrong. Sure, there are cowboys here. I saw a horse tied up outside a bar a few weeks ago, ten miles from my inner city house. And obviously there are companies that go beserk once in a while--usually as a result of failed deregulation. But the country is not such a hotbed of unrestrained capitalism that some Europeans seem to think.
In my current city, the following are publicly owned: Water, sewer, electricity, gas, buses, all roads, parks, many museums. The following are private: Telephone, cable TV, railroads, health care for most people. There is no proposal whatsoever to change this setup, with the exceptin of health care.
I think what is going on is that Europe has this view of the U.S. as a horrible dog-eat-dog kind of place, and then sees our reasonably successful economy, and makes an invalid connection between the two. It's not a dog-eat-dog world, and our economy is successful mostly because of its size and our homogeneous population.
Deregulation of electricity is not going to solve Europe's problems. You need an EU federation, but that's not politically correct for an American to say, as I know so well...
But I don't get how the 'EU federation' comes into the picture here, and why it would be non-PC in any way. I do think the EU should become more federal (because that's more democratic than the current version), but a lot of people especially in Britain don't like that idea, so I have to wait longer; but I don't see its relevance to the energy question.
This post of mine BTW was not at all about US-EU comparisons - I even only mentioned California because I thought many would expect me to write about that when they see the title I put up. Moreover, though it may well be, I don't remember the particular policy of electricity marget deregulation being promoted with a US example - just the usual market-is-more-effective mantra. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In my current city, the following are publicly owned: Water, sewer, electricity, gas, buses, all roads, parks, many museums.
Out of pure interest, could you tell us more about the electricity part? Do you mean the grid, or production too? If the latter, what is its structure (i.e. coal/gas/etc.)? Since when is it as it is, were there any changes? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In Colorado Springs, the city owns its own power plants. They're coal fired plants and they're pretty big, around 600 MW altogether. There's also a couple of small hydro plants. http://www.csu.org/environment/energy/
The city offers all sorts of special deals. There's an experimental load balancing system for A/C systems. You can also buy wind power from the city for a $3 surcharge per 100 KWH. You can get automatic set-back thermostats at a discount. Also, Nikola Tesla, inventor of many of the features of AC power distribution, lived in Colorado Springs for a while and did lots of interesting experiments here.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnifying_Transmitter
Historically in the west, each town had its own power plant because things are so spread out. Rural electrification proceeded pretty slowly until the second world war; about 25% of rural homes had electricity by 1940. The Rural Electrification Administration was part of Roosevelt's New Deal, and it set up a bunch of rural electric cooperatives. Most city systems, independent operators, and rural cooperatives were gradually consolidated into the Public Service Company of Colorado, which was recently taken over by Xcel energy which covers several states. There are still about a dozen different electricity suppliers in Colorado. I don't know why Colorado Springs remained independent. http://www.eere.energy.gov/state_energy/states_utilitygenerationtable.cfm?state=CO
All of this is regulated by a state agency. http://www.dora.state.co.us/puc/
Here's an example of another Colorado city, Fort Collins, that decided in 1935 to stop buying power from the Public Service Company and run its own system. I remember my mother complaining about how stupid it was for the city to be in the electricity business, but the conservative farmers who live there think it's better than being under the thumb of a nasty corporation. They probably were happy when the Public Service Company was bought by Xcel, which is even more anonymous. http://www.ci.fort-collins.co.us/electric/history.php
Austin Energy Power Plants.
Although Texas authorized utilities to deregulate, Austin has chosen not to go that route (Whew! Thank God!) As a result, our rates are much lower than comparable privately-owned electric utilities. This newsletter (pdf, scroll down) shows the rate comparisons - note that the deregulated utilities are the ones with the highest rates.
As a bonus, check out Plug in Austin and some of the other links on the side of the page.
