How Deregulation and Competitiveness Have Changed the Energy Market

It seems ironic that energy products and services should have been so strictly and rigidly regulated for so long in the United States and other Western nations (where the cause of the free market has historically had the most support). Whatever the reasons behind that highly regulated system, by the late 1980s it began to fall apart and deregulation spread throughout the electricity and natural gas markets. The consequences have been many, and on the whole they have been favorable to individual residential consumers as well as commercial and industrial energy consumers. At the most fundamental level, what has occurred is that there is now much greater competitiveness in the market, and though absolute energy prices have risen over time there are now more flexible pricing options and green energy solutions that are really creating a better panorama for you, the end consumer.

Unfortunately, too many people are unfamiliar with the implications of the changes that have taken place over the last two to three decades in the energy sector—a problem we would like to help overcome in this article. Age-old assumptions that, for example, the only entity you can buy grid electricity or even natural gas from is your local energy utility company, need to be thrown out once and for all! Those days are over, and that's worth celebrating: in the place of those straitjacket policies, we now have better policies that allow for much greater competitiveness (policies that clearly reflect advancements in energy infrastructure). Though your utility company will still be the entity delivering electricity or natural gas to your home or other establishment, they may not necessarily be the company actually selling that energy to you. They still get a part of the pie, but they no longer have the monopoly that they used.

Rather, consumers can get significant energy savings by purchasing from companies based much farther afield—companies with more flexible pricing plans, with greater involvement in the green energy field, and so on and so forth. While your local utility is probably still only able to offer you electricity at market values for each month, other suppliers are able to offer you periods of up to three, four or even five years where your energy prices are absolutely frozen! Similarly, they will be able to offer you price protections that prevent your rates from rising as drastically as they would for consumers whose costs are entirely pegged to market values.

In addition to helping defend the interests of consumers across the United States and Canada, in cities like New York and Ontario, these market changes have also helped to promote green technologies—even when they are not yet capable to offer energy supplies at prices equal to or less than fossil fuels. These technologies need to be given the chance to develop to the point where they will be competitive as regards pricing, and surely that is a time not too far off thanks to the new framework of the energy sector.

To learn more about changes in the energy field and how they can benefit you, just go to energysavings.com. See the Ontario Energy Savings plans and products currently available, and look around for energy solutions across North America.