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monopoly market

Rabbit Holes and Electric Rates

Rabbit Holes and Electric Rates

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week as I began writing the second DRIPE post, I started down an electric-utility-pricing rabbit hole. I pulled back and saved it for this week – rabbit hole, botfly larvae, and all. Now is a good time to play a card dealt to me a few weeks ago. An article in the Ohio Capital Journal described the latest efficiency bill that unanimously passed a House committee and included a precious quote from the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel: “The free market can create the efficiency effects of the legislation, without handing over millions to utility companies along the way.” Wrong, for…
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Shared Economy and Distributed Capitalism? Pffff

By Energy Rant No Comments
I spent last week at the Grid Evolution Summit presented by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) in the Nation’s Capital. The opening speaker, Jeremy Rifkin, has authored 20-some books, the most recent of which is called, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society.” This post is based on a related article you can read yourself, here. The crux of the book, message, and article is that “investor-based capitalism, which focuses on resources for immediate returns, will inevitably be replaced by a more distributed and streamlined network-based capitalism, alongside a sharing economy governed by a high-tech global commons.” You have heard the…
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