Electricity Deregulation: California and Australia

Abstract

The twentieth century saw regulation and deregulation of many industries, including transporta-tion, trucking, airline, banking and media. Toward the end of the century, there was an increasedinterest in, and implementation of, liberalizing policies in the energy industry. The U.S. and Aus-tralian deregulation system has been left mainly in the hands of their states1,2, which has led tomany interesting case studies. This paper will focus on two of these case studies, California andAustralia. California's \deregulation crisis" is often cited as an argument against liberalizing energymarkets.3Comparatively, the eastern provinces of Australia integrated into a single deregulatedmarket, demonstrating some early successes and some diculties associated with the deregulationmodel.