Not necessarily. “This kind of simplistic analysis you often see where it’s business saying regulation is bad, vs. liberals or Democrats saying regulation is good, is not entirely accurate. Plenty of times, businesses are calling for regulation if it suits their business model,” Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen’s energy director stated in an article in Bloomberg Businessweek.
Apparently, energy deregulation doesn’t suit industrial power users because they asked federal regulators to investigate deregulated energy markets. They also asked for changes, including more say in transmission networks’ operations. “Typically, these are folks who would want less regulation,” American Public Power Association vice president Joe Nipper stated in the same article. The federal regulators told them deregulation was working just fine. Consequently, the nation’s largest corporations now want Congress to step in, according to Bloomberg Businessweek’s David J. Lynch.
Industrial power users wear several hats. Sometimes they’re businesses providing products to customers. Other times, they’re customers buying things from suppliers. They play different roles, and their attitude about a regulation depends on the role they happening to be playing.
Sometimes, it’s not a question of roles, but gaining a competitive edge. For example, a business that manufactures emission control systems might welcome tighter air pollution standards if they create a market for its products. A manufacturer emitting pollutants might welcome such standards too if it can afford the systems but its competitors can’t.
Sounds far-fetched? Not if you ask manufacturer Babcock & Wilcox; it’s not gloomy about EPA’s plans to regulate utilities greenhouse gas emissions; it sees a $10 billion to $12 billion market for its scrubbers, which strip sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury from coal-fired plans.
