The US Electricity Industry After 20 Years of Restructuring
The US Electricity Industry After 20 Years of Restructuring
复制标题
DOI：
10.1146/annurev-economics-080614-115630
复制
发表时间：
2015-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Bushnell, James
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Borenstein, Severin;Bushnell, James
20世纪90年代的电力重组结束了许多州的垂直整合垄断时代，允许非公用事业发电商向公用事业公司出售电力，在少数州，允许零售服务提供商从发电商那里购买电力并出售给最终用户。我们回顾了重组的经济论据以及随后几年产生的影响。Weargue认为，重组的最大政治动机是租金转移，而不是效率提高。虽然电力结构调整提高了效率，但人们普遍认为这是令人失望的，因为一些倡导者作出的降价承诺是基于政治上不可持续的租金转移。实际上，自重组以来，电价变化更多地是由发电技术进步和天然气价格波动等外部因素驱动的，而不是由重组驱动的。我们认为，类似的动态支撑了分布式发电（主要是屋顶太阳能光伏系统）背后的当前政治势头，从社会角度来看，这种系统仍然很昂贵，但由于它能够实现租金转移，因此在私人经济方面也是如此。
Electricity restructuring in the 1990s ended the era of vertically integrated monopolies in many states, allowing nonutility generators to sell electricity to utilities and, in fewer states, allowing retail service providers to buy electricity from generators and sell to end-use customers. We review the economic arguments for restructuring and the resulting effects in subsequent years. Weargue that the greatest political motivation for restructuring was rent shifting, not efficiency improvements. Although electricity restructuring has brought efficiency improvements, it has generally been viewed as a disappointment because the price-reduction promises made by some advocates were based on politically unsustainable rent transfers. In reality, electricity rate changes since restructuring have been driven more by exogenous factors, such as generation technology advances and natural gas price fluctuations, than by restructuring. We argue that a similar dynamic underpins the current political momentum behind distributed generation, primarily rooftop solar photovoltaic systems, which remains costly from a societal viewpoint, but privately economic owing to the rent transfers it enables.