Electricity from competitive wholesale power markets keeps the lights on for two-thirds of all Americans. But pressure is mounting to reform these markets to match the changes underway in the energy system.
Wholesale power markets evolved in a world where dispatchable, central-station power plants slavishly followed demand; where the environmental costs of producing, delivering and burning fossil fuels were largely ignored; and where utilities measured their fortunes by how many kilowatt-hours of electricity they delivered to end-use customers. That world is rapidly disappearing due to emerging distributed technologies, evolving consumer preferences, and the need to reduce emissions.
