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Greening the Grid: the Next Revolution in Electricity Regulation

Timothy P. Duane

  • Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning and Landscape Architecture and Planning
  • University of California at Berkeley

The electric utility industry has gone through enormous changes in recent decades, moving from structure dominated by treatment as a state-regulated "natural monopoly" from the 1920s to the 1990s in the United States to a partially deregulated industry since the late 1990s. The shift from the Natural Monopoly Era to the Deregulation Era left a lasting mark on the electric utility regulatory structure. But an equally important shift has been occurring over the past five years in another area of regulatory policy: the climate change policy debate has shifted from "if" we should limit greenhouse gas emissions to "when" and "how" we will limit these emissions.

This presentation explores the implications of the Climate Change Era for electricity regulation, industry structure, generation technology choice, and environmental regulation. In short, it examines how the Greening of the Grid can be achieved through proper incentives and regulation.

Monday, February 4, 2008