The purpose of this report is to demonstrate that the time is ripe for a rational, multifaceted, fresh look at the technology, economics, and negative as well as positive externalities of electricity service in the United States. Electricity markets face a policy-driven energy transition that threatens the financial sustainability of many businesses across the electric-power value chain. There are many efforts to adapt the markets to out-of-market policies that support a preferred mix of available technologies rather than targeting ultimate goals such as lower emissions, affordable electricity, and reliable service. But these attempts undervalue the role of consumers in reducing system costs and fueling true innovation. Worse, the current uncoordinated, blunderbuss approach to energy policy across numerous jurisdictions has turned into a political competition of “leveling the playing field” for favorite technologies via subsidies and mandates. Many of these policies and attendant market design changes lead to litigation, which raises the cost of electricity to customers, increases uncertainty for market participants, and encourages further rent-seeking. This report argues for a return to competitive principles with a policy that focuses on ultimate goals rather than technologies and that fully incorporates consumers into the market.

Gürcan Gülen has more than 25 years of global experience in research, technical assistance, and capacity building in oil, natural gas, and electric power value chains. His electric power research includes comparative assessment of legal and regulatory frameworks for competitive electricity markets across numerous jurisdictions; dispatch modeling to investigate the future role of various generation technologies under various scenarios and to assess their impacts on electricity prices, generator revenues, and emissions; analysis of impacts of changes to energy market designs on real-time prices and out-of-market uplift payments; study of improvements on levelized cost of electricity estimates; and determination of per-megawatt-hour value of federal and state subsidies for different generation technologies. He has published numerous reports and book chapters. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Boston College and a B.A. in Economics from Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey.