IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/enp/wpaper/eprg0715.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Municipal aggregation and retail competition in the Ohio energy sector

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Littlechild

    (University of Birmingham)

Abstract

Ohio allows communities to vote to aggregate the loads of individual consumers (unless they opt out) in order to seek a competitive energy supplier. Over 200 communities have voted to do this for electricity. By 2004 residential switching reached 69% in Cleveland territory (95% from municipal aggregation) but by 2006 had fallen to 8%. Savings are now small, but customer acquisition costs are low and the cost to consumers is negligible. Aggregation and retail competition have been thwarted by Rate Stabilization Plans holding incumbent utility prices below cost since 2006. In the Ohio gas sector, rate regulation has not discouraged aggregation and competition, but market prices falling below municipally negotiated rates can be politically embarrassing. How municipal aggregation would fare against individual choice in a market conducive to retail competition is an open question, but the policy deserves consideration elsewhere.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Littlechild, 2007. "Municipal aggregation and retail competition in the Ohio energy sector," Working Papers EPRG 0715, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg0715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/eprg-wp0715.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Littlechild, Stephen, 2006. "Competition and contracts in the Nordic residential electricity markets," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 135-147, September.
    2. Ridley, Scott, 1995. "Seeing the forest from the trees: Emergence of the competitive franchise," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 8(4), pages 39-49, May.
    3. Ridley, Scott, 1997. "Local government: the sleeping giant in electric industry restructuring," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 10(9), pages 13-21, November.
    4. Littlechild, Stephen C, 2003. "Wholesale Spot Price Pass-Through," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 61-91, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Stagnaro, Carlo & Amenta, Carlo & Di Croce, Giulia & Lavecchia, Luciano, 2020. "Managing the liberalization of Italy's retail electricity market: A policy proposal☆," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    2. Stephen Littlechild, 2008. "Some Applied Economics of Utility Regulation A Paper in Honor of David Newbery," The Energy Journal, , vol. 29(2_suppl), pages 43-62, December.
    3. Saskia Lavrijssen & Arturo Carrillo Parra, 2017. "Radical Prosumer Innovations in the Electricity Sector and the Impact on Prosumer Regulation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-21, July.
    4. Noah Dormady & Matthew Hoyt & Alfredo Roa-Henriquez & William Welch, 2019. "Who Pays for Retail Electric Deregulation? Evidence of Cross-Subsidization from Complete Bill Data," The Energy Journal, , vol. 40(2), pages 161-194, March.
    5. McDaniel, Tanga M. & Groothuis, Peter A., 2012. "Retail competition in electricity supply—Survey results in North Carolina," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 315-321.
    6. Silvia Blasi & Silvia Rita Sedita, 2020. "The diffusion of a policy innovation in the energy sector: evidence from the collective switching case in Europe," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(6), pages 680-704, June.
    7. Feldhaus, Christoph & Lingens, Jörg & Löschel, Andreas & Zunker, Gerald, 2022. "Encouraging consumer activity through automatic switching of the electricity contract - A field experiment," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mirza, Faisal Mehmood & Bergland, Olvar, 2012. "Pass-through of wholesale price to the end user retail price in the Norwegian electricity market," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 2003-2012.
    2. Nils-Henrik M. von der Fehr & Petter Vegard Hansen, 2010. "Electricity Retailing in Norway," The Energy Journal, , vol. 31(1), pages 25-46, January.
    3. Defeuilley, Christophe, 2009. "Retail competition in electricity markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 377-386, February.
    4. Stephen Littlechild, 2019. "Promoting competition and protecting customers? Regulation of the GB retail energy market 2008–2016," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 107-139, April.
    5. Johnsen, Tor Arnt & Olsen, Ole Jess, 2011. "Regulated and unregulated Nordic retail prices," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3337-3345, June.
    6. Wiser, R. H., 2000. "The role of public policy in emerging green power markets: an analysis of marketer preferences," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 177-212, June.
    7. Vesterberg, Mattias, 2017. "Power to the people: Electricity demand and household behavior," Umeå Economic Studies 942, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    8. Arango, Santiago & Larsen, Erik, 2011. "Cycles in deregulated electricity markets: Empirical evidence from two decades," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 2457-2466, May.
    9. Neuhoff, Karsten & De Vries, Laurens, 2004. "Insufficient incentives for investment in electricity generations," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 253-267, December.
    10. Costa-Campi, M.T. & Duch-Brown, N. & García-Quevedo, J., 2014. "R&D drivers and obstacles to innovation in the energy industry," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 20-30.
    11. repec:bla:opecrv:v:32:y:2008:i:2:p:150-183 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Nogata, Daisuke, 2022. "Determinants of household switching between natural gas suppliers: Evidence from Japan," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    13. Littlechild, Stephen, 2006. "Residential energy contracts and the 28 day rule," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 44-62, March.
    14. Eero Lehto, 2010. "Electricity prices in the Finnish retail market," Working Papers 259, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    15. Vesterberg, Mattias, 2018. "The effect of price on electricity contract choice," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 59-70.
    16. Paul L. Joskow, 2003. "The Difficult Transition to Competitive Electricity Markets in the U.S," Working Papers 0308, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
    17. Hanimann, Raphael & Vinterbäck, Johan & Mark-Herbert, Cecilia, 2015. "Consumer behavior in renewable electricity: Can branding in accordance with identity signaling increase demand for renewable electricity and strengthen supplier brands?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 11-21.
    18. Littlechild, Stephen, 2006. "Competition and contracts in the Nordic residential electricity markets," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 135-147, September.
    19. Vesterberg, Mattias, 2017. "The effect of price on electricity contract choice," Umeå Economic Studies 941, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    20. Littlechild Stephen C., 2002. "Competition in Retail Electricity Supply," Journal des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines, De Gruyter, vol. 12(2), pages 1-26, June.
    21. Palacios M., Sebastián & Saavedra P., Eduardo, 2017. "Alternative policies for the liberalization of retail electricity markets in Chile," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 72-92.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Municipal aggregation; retail competition; electricity; gas; Ohio; regulation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L33 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise - - - Comparison of Public and Private Enterprise and Nonprofit Institutions; Privatization; Contracting Out
    • L43 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Legal Monopolies and Regulation or Deregulation
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • L98 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg0715. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ruth Newman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/jicamuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.