Nathan Associates affiliate Andrew Kleit, Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics at Pennsylvania State University, argues in the Wall Street Journal for more deregulation of electricity markets.

Greater competition through deregulation will bring about lower costs for consumers and a more environmentally friendly and reliable electricity grid, wrote Dr. Kleit, founding chair of the Pennsylvania State University program in Energy and Business Finance.

While Dr. Kleit acknowledges that businesses have thus far benefited more than residential consumers from deregulation, he maintains that greater competition is the fastest way to allow innovations like renewable energy sources, energy imbalance markets and time of day pricing to come to fruition. He argues that regulators and utility monopolies don’t have incentives in place to make these and other necessary investments.

Dr. Kleit makes the pro-deregulation case in a special energy edition of the Journal. Kenneth Rose, independent consultant and senior fellow in economics at the Institute of Public Utilities at Michigan State University, makes the opposing case.

The full pro-and-con opinion piece is available here. The issue is particularly timely by a wide margin, Nevada voters approved a ballot measure November 8 requiring the Legislature to create a competitive electricity market, ending NV Energy’s regulated monopoly.

Dr. Kleit’s economics and business specialties at Nathan include antitrust, regulatory economics, energy, futures markets, and healthcare. His current academic research at Pennsylvania State University is focused on weather-risk management and electricity markets.