About one-third of our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions come from generating electricity. President Obama’s administration proposed a comprehensive regulatory plan to reduce those emissions. President Trump Donald John TrumpBarr criticizes DOJ in speech declaring all agency power 'is invested in the attorney general' Military leaders asked about using heat ray on protesters outside White House: report Powell warns failure to reach COVID-19 deal could 'scar and damage' economy MORE is proposing to shelve it.

In the robust debate over whether and how to reduce carbon emissions something is being overlooked – that freeing consumers to choose their own suppliers of electricity can achieve steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

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Empowering consumers can be an incredibly effective way of de-carbonizing the generation and consumption of electricity — without imposing new taxes or mandates. It therefore holds the promise of bridging the ideologically driven gap between the political parties on this issue.

Electricity markets are regulated by both the federal and state governments. Wholesale interstate transactions are regulated by the federal government, while the states regulate retail transactions.

Most states grant local utilities the exclusive right to sell electricity within their footprint. Some states, however, allow consumers to select their power supplier in a competitive market. In these states (such as New York and Texas) consumers frequently choose to purchase green power. Every week comes news that a major corporation has entered into a contract to buy electricity from a wind or solar farm. There have been no reports of consumers contracting to purchase power from a coal plant.

Here is another, broader sense in which customer empowerment leads to a cleaner power system: quite simply, it creates markets in which suppliers seek competitive advantages, which incentivizes innovation, which in turn leads to advancements in technologies in both generating and consuming power. It can be taken almost as a law of nature that more advanced technologies produce less pollution.

Customer empowerment also yields new transactional modes, such as aggregation of residential consumers to increase their bargaining power and make feasible direct purchases of green power similarly to what commercial and industrial customers can do.

Competition in retail markets also facilitates localized, distributed energy, such as supplier cooperatives in which roof-top solar units combine production and are interconnected through a micro-grid.

Competition leads to innovation, and innovation reduces pollution.

Unfortunately, in most of the country there is a roadblock to competition in retail electricity sales: vertically integrated utilities, which are shielded from competition by state-granted exclusive franchises. They defend their monopolies with a “father knows best” argument. Only they can be entrusted with looking after the interests of consumers, they say.

This may have been true in the past – but it is true no longer.

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As shown above, where retail competition takes root, a vibrant competitive provider sector emerges, and the distributed energy resource base grows. Competitive market entrants take advantage of new capabilities to process vast amounts of information swiftly and granularly, due to digitization and big data analytics. Consumers install smart appliances that engage in interactive communication with the power grid, without human intervention (part of the internet-of-things).

The past is, indeed, past. Competitive retail markets have disrupted the old paradigm of the vertically-integrated utility selling power to captive consumers. The notion that sales of electricity must necessarily be the exclusive domain of utility monopolies has been put to lie.

Let us have this discussion. In a country that cherishes personal freedom, shouldn’t the burden of persuasion on this issue be placed on the monopolist?

Joseph Vasapoli previously served as special assistant to Deputy Secretary of Energy Linda G. Stuntz and special assistant to Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Anthony G. Souza. Vasapoli was associate counsel to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In the private sector, Vasapoli worked on restructuring of electricity markets.