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Nathaniel Treadway's avatar

In paragraph three you mention "the separation of generation, transmission, and distribution ..." It seems vitally important to mention the important fourth sector -- energy services -- to explain Texas' prohibition on T&D utilities. Utilities cannot own or sell electricity. That matters for electric policy issues.

Lynne Kiesling's avatar

Agreed. But since this is about Order 1920, and especially since ERCOT is not FERC jurisdictional, I didn't get into those kind of details here.

Rob Bradley's avatar

FERC Order 1920, as today's WSJ editorial states, is a special-interest, Net Zero concoction of the Biden Administration that has nothing to do with free markets. Why not ask if it is central planning and bring in the classical liberal tradition? Socialized transmission costs to get uneconomic wind and solar from nowhere to somewhere--the latest step down electricity's road to serfdom.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-energy-regulatory-commission-congress-chuck-schumer-permits-cb09fbe4

rds's avatar

Hi Lynne, nice breakdown of the order and relating it to theory; very thought-provoking.

What do you think about the idea of providing a property-tax abatement -- call if a "grid-reliability credit" perhaps -- to landowners who stand to be impacted but not benefit from a transmission line?

Could be funded, as you propose, by beneficiaries. Developers would continue to fund the infrastructure to get their products to market, maintaining cost-causation principles, but beneficiaries make those impacted whole by funding this tax break to get their buy-in.

Len Kinder's avatar

Sociocracy is the most efficient form of consent decision making that I know of.

Sober Christian Gentleman's avatar

Stop letting them tell you what to do. They have no legitimate power over you. If you let them regulate anything, they will eventually regulate everything. This podcast explains the concept:

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/FZahIOwu1Jb

Lynne Kiesling's avatar

Not relevant to the topic of this essay so I will delete this comment shortly.