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The Energy Markets Podcast

Bryan Lee

64 episodes

8 months ago

In this episode we continue our consideration of what Bill Massey in our first episode this season called "the battle of the statistics" between monopoly and competition advocates. We talk with Michael Giberson, an economist and senior fellow for energy with the R Street Institute, who notes the importance of taking statistics into proper context when attempting to contrast between monopoly utility regulation and competitive markets – particularly the need to account for the impact of inflati...

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In this episode we continue our consideration of what Bill Massey in our first episode this season called "the battle of the statistics" between monopoly and competition advocates. We talk with Michael Giberson, an economist and senior fellow for energy with the R Street Institute, who notes the importance of taking statistics into proper context when attempting to contrast between monopoly utility regulation and competitive markets – particularly the need to account for the impact of inflati...

Show more...

Episodes (20/64)

The Energy Markets Podcast

S4E7: R Street Institute economist Michael Giberson speaks to price trends in electricity markets

In this episode we continue our consideration of what Bill Massey in our first episode this season called "the battle of the statistics" between monopoly and competition advocates. We talk with Michael Giberson, an economist and senior fellow for energy with the R Street Institute, who notes the importance of taking statistics into proper context when attempting to contrast between monopoly utility regulation and competitive markets – particularly the need to account for the impact of inflati...

1 year ago

41 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S4E6: RESA's Rich Spilky speaks to the 'battle of the statistics' regarding the consumer benefits of retail energy competition

Since the dawn of retail energy competition a quarter century ago, various factions pro and con have engaged in a "battle of the statistics" (as former FERC Commissioner Bill Massey termed it in Episode 1 of this season) regarding the benefits that consumers – particularly residential customers – obtain from competition in retail electricity service. Mostly, these statistical arguments have centered around price savings that residential consumers may or may not have obtained from having a com...

1 year ago

52 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S4E5: The Center for LNG's Charlie Riedl on the Biden administration's 'pause' on export permits for liquefied natural gas

The Biden administration in January announced a pause in reviewing export permits for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in order to better understand the impacts that the United States' world-leading LNG exports will have on domestic natural gas prices, climate change, and environmental equity. Could the pause threaten the U.S.'s position as the world's top LNG supplier? Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for LNG, speaks to the the national security implications of the administr...

1 year ago

53 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S4E4: Former Montana utility regulator Travis Kavulla discusses the headwinds and the opportunities for competitive retail suppliers to bring value to energy consumers

The debate over the benefits of competition for energy consumers has persisted since the advent of retail competition for electricity and natural gas more than two decades ago. Consumers are stuck in a limbo between traditional monopoly regulation and competitive choice because the movement to deregulate energy pricing (much as most other formerly price-regulated industries were deregulated decades ago) has stalled in the wake of the catastrophic collapse of California's disastrously ill-desi...

1 year ago

57 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S4E3: NRDC's David Doniger on the ubiquity of emissions cap-and-trade programs, an alternative to command-and-control regulation, which seemingly has fallen out of favor when it comes to managing climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions

Our discussion continues with David Doniger, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney, who notes that flexible market-based emissions cap-and-trade programs have been applied somewhat ubiquitously to address a range of environmental issues, from eliminating lead in gasoline, to combatting acid rain, to phasing out ozone-depleting chemicals – even to allocating catch limits for herring, an issue incidentally connected to cases now pending before the Supreme Court challenging the long-...

1 year ago

38 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S4E2: NRDC's David Doniger discusses the Chevron doctrine case pending before the Supreme Court, and addresses past and present efforts to regulate carbon emissions

Who better to discuss the ramifications of the Supreme Court's apparent path toward striking down the long-standing legal precedent known as the Chevron doctrine than the lawyer who argued the original case 40 years ago? Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Attorney David Doniger is a lion of the environmental movement who has been instrumental in the environmental group's efforts to rein in air pollution from fossil fuels and emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals. He has been a fixture...

1 year ago

46 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S4E1: Former FERC regulator Bill Massey discusses the courts' expansive view of the Commission's statutory authority and pending cases before SCOTUS that may test whether that expansive view will 'have its wings clipped'

Energy lawyer and law school professor William Massey, at 10 years the longest-serving commissioner ever at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, discusses the vast body of legal precedent finding FERC has expansive authority under the Federal Power Act and Natural Gas Act, and reviews pending cases before the Supreme Court that may test whether this expansive view of FERC's authority will continue under the court's new Major Questions Doctrine. "The courts have said FERC’s authority is ...

1 year ago

1 hour

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E24: 'Food is energy.' So what is the energy-intensive fertilizer industry doing to decarbonize while still keeping the world fed?

The world's burgeoning billions have been kept fed thanks to the "Green Revolution" of the 20th century, which featured new hybridized crops with enhanced yields. Often deemed a miracle of science, it was also made possible by energy-intensive industrial fertilizers. Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch were each awarded the Nobel Prize for their contributions to the widely used processes for synthesizing ammonia from nitrogen taken from ambient air and hydrogen derived from fossil fuels. These ammonia...

1 year ago

1 hour 5 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E23: Commodities trading expert Matthew Hunter talks about the financial markets for managing – or hedging – energy price risk, and how they and consumers are impacted by extreme events such as California in 2000 and Texas in 2021

Matthew Hunter was a power trader in the Western market in 2000, when California's poorly designed and managed electricity market imploded costing consumers hundreds of millions of dollars. After that, he spent much of his career at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. He gives us a deep dive into hedging – futures markets, derivatives and swaps – and how these complex price-risk mechanisms don't necessarily protect consumers in the end. A ...

1 year ago

56 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E22: State Senator Tom Davis discusses his pro-competitive legislative agenda for South Carolina electricity consumers

State Senator Tom Davis of South Carolina is a rare breed in politics today. At a time when no other state is actively considering competitive reforms to their traditionally monopoly-regulated utility sectors, and many politicians in states already benefiting from competition in electricity are promoting anticompetitive measures, he is leading the push for his state's consumers and economy to benefit from greater customer choice and competition among electricity providers. The Republic...

1 year ago

46 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E21: WPTF's Scott Miller talks about market-based grid regionalization efforts in the West, and the ghosts of the 2000-2001 regional energy crisis that haunt those efforts

More than two decades ago when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission sought to put large regional wholesale power markets in place nationally, Western states were a hotbed of opposition to the since-abandoned goal. But today there are two competing proposals for competitive day-ahead wholesale power markets as the region has come to recognize that market-based regionalization helps cost-effectively and reliably integrate increasing amounts of variable renewable energy resources. The...

2 years ago

35 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E20: Octopus Energy's Michael Lee speaks to his company's consumer-centric vision of 'Retail 2.0' for energy supply

UK-based Octopus Energy has seen extraordinary growth since launched in 2015 by fund-management firm Octopus Group. It's heavily invested in renewable energy in the UK and elsewhere, and it has retail energy supply operations in Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan and New Zealand, with its U.S. arm headquartered in Houston. As its name would suggest, Octopus has its tentacles everywhere all at once in competitive energy supply, it would seem. And that reach promises to extend even further with t...

2 years ago

55 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E19: The Energy Democracy Initiative's John Farrell speaks to how, in his view, electric utility monopolies 'fuel climate disasters and public corruption'

Electric utility monopolies have captured headlines in recent years by sparking catastrophic wildfires and fomenting public corruption scandals in several states. "There are probably other things like this going on we just haven't found out about," remarks John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. We spoke with him about his recent article in the American Prospect, How private monopolies fuel climate disaster and public corruption.&nbs...

2 years ago

34 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E18: Special Initiative on Offshore Wind’s Kris Ohleth speaks to the strong headwinds facing offshore wind

The flood of financial headlines on the offshore wind industry have been quite bearish in recent months. The industry has been buffetted by strong post-COVID headwinds – dramatic inflationary pressures and supply chain problems – that have rendered several Atlantic coast projects uneconomic. After writing down its assets by $2.3 billion, Orsted's stock has been punished by the market as the company threatens to walk away from uneconomic projects unless their terms can be renegotiated to refle...

2 years ago

23 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E17: EPSA's Todd Snitchler discusses EPA's new power plant rules in the context of ongoing reliability concerns stemming from the transition to a clean-energy power grid

The Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rules to significantly crack down on carbon emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants, as published, promises to aggravate growing power grid reliability concerns, EPSA president and CEO Todd Snitchler suggests. "I think we need to be thinking a little more holistically and not siloed in the rules in order for us to make sure that we can achieve the outcomes that policymakers want us to achieve, while still ensuring system reliabili...

2 years ago

43 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E16: FERC Commissioner Mark Christie calls for reevaluation of competitive wholesale power markets after 25 years

Commissioner Mark Christie of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has been a prominent advocate of the need to overhaul the competitive market design at the heart of the regional wholesale power markets that have evolved in the U.S. over the past 25 years ("It's time to reconsider single-clearing price mechanisms in U.S. energy markets", Energy Law Journal, May 2, 2023). The fossil fuel-fired "dispatchable" generation units that Christie sees as crucial to ensuring power grid reliabili...

2 years ago

1 hour 1 minute

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E15: Former Massachusetts regulator Paul Hibbard of the Analysis Group talks about his study of retail electricity competition that aims to inform the policy debate over ending retail choice for residential customers

Massachusetts is actively considering Gov. Maura Healey's longstanding demand to end competitive retail energy sales to residential customers. As part of this debate in Massachusetts and elsewhere, the Retail Energy Advancement League commissioned the Analysis Group's Paul Hibbard, a former Massachusetts utility regulator, to provide a comprehensive examination of retail energy choice. We talk with the report's author as well as Chris Ercoli, REAL's president and CEO. Support the show

2 years ago

1 hour 5 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E14: The Nuclear Energy Institute's Matt Crozat discusses new nuclear and SMRs as part of nuclear power's role in the clean-energy transition

There's something like a couple dozen proposals now for development of small modular reactors (SMRs), widely seen as the future of nuclear power as a participant in the clean-energy transition. Publicly traded NuScale* is at the vanguard of this trend. We spoke with the Nuclear Energy Institute's Matt Crozat about the prospects for SMRs and nuclear's role in the clean-energy transition at a time when we thought the first of Georgia Power's new Vogtle nuclear power units would have already bee...

2 years ago

45 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E13: Brattle Group consultants discuss their report for the South Carolina legislature on the benefits of adopting an organized regional wholesale power market in the Southeast

Burned by an aborted nuclear power plant new build that saddled the state's consumers with hundreds of millions of dollars in needless costs for years to come, South Carolina's Act 187 established a legislative study committee to ponder whether the state's electricity consumers might not be better off with competitive reforms of the Palmetto State's 150-year-old monopoly regulatory regime. A centerpiece of the committee's considerations is a sweeping analysis of the competitive options the st...

2 years ago

46 minutes

The Energy Markets Podcast

S3E12: Rob Gramlich, Frank Lacey and Doug Kantor discuss the obstacles posed by utility monopoly regulation for private-sector EV charging infrastructure development

Grid Strategy's Rob Gramlich and Electric Advisors Consulting's Frank Lacey detail the findings of a policy analysis paper they co-authored, Serving Customers Best: The Benefits of Competitive Electric Vehicle Charging Stations.* We also talk with Doug Kantor, general counsel for NACS, the international association for the convenience store industry, which sponsored the policy analysis. The analysis found EV charging customers will be served best if utilities are not permitted to extend thei...

2 years ago

1 hour 3 minutes