Chapter 4Energy and the Law
Since the new millennium, it's been fashionable for business and technology writers to praise the virtues of disruption, disintermediation, and decentralization. Words such as disaggregation and democratization are used indiscriminately, creating the dangerous illusion that complex problems can be solved easily by ordinary people with little or no understanding of how complex systems work in the real world.
Anyone who has raised a family or run a business knows that complex problems resist easy solutions. Problems are like onions: you peel away one layer and there's always another layer underneath it.
Take the problem of energy and the law, for example. There are federal regulations governing the transmission of energy resources such as natural gas and electricity. But there is no common set of laws or regulations governing how energy is consumed at the individual level. That's left to the states and municipalities. As a result, there's a large degree of variability.
Our energy laws are a hot mess; they are inconsistent and unpredictable. They create uncertainty, making it difficult for businesses to plan for the future. In some instances, our energy laws conflict with the rights to private property guaranteed by our Constitution. Because the laws for energy are often ambiguous and easily misinterpreted, they can sow the seeds for unanticipated problems in the future.
Let's say I've built a manufacturing plant in one state and I want to expand operations ...
Get Power Economics now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
