Disparate Regulatory Pathways for Animating Net‐Zero Legislation

Abstract

State legislatures have been very active in recent years in the pursuit of net‐zero action. This column discusses the essential institutional frameworks within which U.S. regulators and their utilities have long existed. That framework—legal, legislative, accounting, and administrative—defines the relationship between U.S. regulatory commissions and their jurisdictional utilities. That “institutional ecosystem” has been highly successful: prices in the U.S. for both retail electricity and natural gas public service is a fraction of those in our peer industrialized nations.