The Marketplace as Policy Innovator

Jan 20, 2015 6:35 PM ET
Campaign: WEC Blog

"In peeling the onion of the EPA’s climate proposal, a much broader concept of regulatory governance emerges — regulation across the entire value chain of businesses that generate electricity. The agency’s power plant proposal borrows from its own history in applying value chain regulatory frameworks, recognizes
recent innovative practices from the private sector, and leverages already existing changes in the marketplace in value chain management, and electricity production in particular.

EPA’s proposed rule clearly aims to reduce greenhouse gases from specific power plants. However, it has crafted a regulation that opens the door to further optimize electricity production by creating new opportunities for energy efficiency and has invited competition among alternative technologies or fuel sources (in particular, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables) to determine which of these can best advance a lower carbon future."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's proposed power plant rule shows how it is using its authority to implement value chain approaches that incorporate flexibility and innovation. Read Terry Yosie's full insightful article in the Environmental Law Institute's (www.eli.org) Environmental Forum.