Fighting privatization of municipally owned utilities is particularly important now with deregulation spreading rapidly. In the US, deregulation, coupled with repeal of the holding company act of '35 (which Congress is considering, and even Dems like Sarbanes support), lax antitrust review, and incompetent federal regulation of the vital (bottleneck) transmission system linking utilites nationwide is going to have several disastrous results.
Prices will go up and service deteriorate as any vestiges of compettion are snuffed out. Think of what happened with airline deregulation. If anything competition may be easier to snuff out in the utility industry. And when that happens the effects on all of us will be much worse because the utility industry is special (more vital) on several levels. Electricity is life-giving. It is needed not only to run hospitals, but for things like oxygen support for home care, as the insurance companies force hospitals to empty. Electric utilities are highly capital intensive (a large chunk of US capital investment goes to build power plans and transmission and distribution systems) and central to the whole industrial system (in an input-output sense). So prices will be raised a second way--through cost increases in many consumer products. Also, electric utilties are responsible for a lot of the air pollution and global warming problems politicians are still ducking. These problems will be exacerbated as, e.g., cheaper coal is burned to cut costs.
Reliability has always been a cornerstone of the regulated industry. As competition takes over and regulatory oversight of utilties weakens, reliability will be increasingly at risk, and, no doubt, lives will be lost. In the US reserve capacity has been declining the last few years. Deregulation will worsen that as utilites move to control supply to drive up price. Under deregulation no utility will have an obligation to build plants and serve customers--the market (profit motive) is supposed to handle that!?!
Beyond controlling prices after deregulation, utilties will cream skim--one thing the deregulation efforts in Pa., Calif. etc., have shown is that utilities are not interested in incurring the costs to compete for and serve residential customers. They prefer larger, and thus less costly to acquire, industrial and commercial loads.
Right now in Edmonton you own your own supply (does your generation fully meet your load, or do you have to buy power, Eugene?) It may be well run and cost efficient now, but ultimately, if you haven't already, you need to consider other ways to protect yourself against the onslaught of unregulated, monopoly utilities. In particular customer aggregation. This is another reason why muni ownership is important. You already have in place the mechanisms to pool customers to get a better deal (through countervailing monopoly)and protect themselves against some abuses. Absent a cheap, sustainable supply of your own power that can't be bought out by the privately owned utilities, some form of aggregation, whether done formally through government as in your case, or through simple citizen organizing, is likely to be necessary for there to be any restraint on prices or effect on service. As you would expect with the power of the utility lobby, however, most of the recent state deregulation laws in the US have been written to inhibit such aggregation. Is that true there too?
To be clear, aggregation can only ameliorate, but not solve, the massive problems that are coming down the road with deregulation. But it is necessary protection against some of the excesses.
Again, good show Eugene, and good luck to Power to the People. If you haven't checked out aggregation, or want more info about what others are doing, you should contact the American Local Power Project (www. local.org). Or email me with further thoughts or questions.
EW Plawiuk wrote:
> VICTORY! BUT THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES!
>Thanks To All You Who Participated in Our Cyber Campaign.
>Eugene Plawiuk
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>Friday, July 16, 1999
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>Council pulls plug on EPCOR sale