Factors affecting expanded electricity trade in North America.

摘要

The authors explore factors that affect electricity trade between enterprises in the US and Canada and the US and Mexico. They look to those underlying policy and institutional factors that affect the relative costs of producing electricity in the three countries. In particular, they consider six factors that appear to have a significant impact on electricity trade in North America: differences in the types of economic regulation of power leading to differences in cost recovery for wholesale and retail power and wheeling charges; changing regulatory attitudes, placing more emphasis on demand-side management and environmental concerns; differences in energy and economic policies; differences in national and subnational environmental policies; changing organization of electric power industries which may foster uncertainty, change historical relationships, and provide other potentially important sources of power for distribution utilities; and differences in the ability of enterprises to gain access to electric power markets because of restrictions placed on transmission access. In Section 2, the authors discuss the regulation of electricity trade in North America and provide an overview of the recent trading experience for electricity between Canada and the US and between Mexico and the US, including the volume of that trade over the past decade and existing transmission capacity between regions of the three countries. In Section 3, they look at the benefits that accrue to trading counties and what those benefits are likely to be for the three countries. The discussion in Section 4 centers on the relevant provisions of the Canada Free Trade Agreement and the proposed North American Free Trade Agreement. In Section 5, they set the stage for the discussion of policy and institutional differences presented in Section 6 by outlining differences in the organization of the electric power sectors of Canada, the US, and Mexico. The study is synthesized in Section 7.