What Doesn't Work: Path Dependence in US Electricity Supply in 2025

Abstract

Ten years ago, in 2015, I began writing regular bi-monthly columns for this journal. My publications focused mostly on US federal energy regulatory problems, stretching back more than 30 years.¹ Reflecting on the decidedly international focus of my 2012 book on economic and political problems relating to the world's pipelines, my regular columns became International Energy.² I spent years attempting to establish successful regulatory regimes in many countries—often ultimately failing, as in Argentina when by 2002, wider social and national economic problems overwhelmed the regulatory system developed to support that country's hopeful early-1990s industry privatizations.³ In doing such international regulatory work, I had the privilege of looking at US energy problems from overseas. It is easier to see the uniquely supportive institutional foundations of US regulation when one compares them to newly formed—frequently unworkable—practices abroad. International Energy seemed right.