Episode 01: What Is Energy Regulation, and Why Should I Care?

Today’s guest, Karl Rábago, is a leading innovator and expert in the clean energy field with more than 30 years of experience that spans all sides of energy regulation, from serving as commissioner on the Texas Public Utilities Commission, to Vice President of the utility Austin Energy; Deputy Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Energy; and expert consultant in support of nonprofit and public interest organizations advocating for an equitable clean energy transition.

The episode walks through: 

• What is energy regulation, and why it’s important to our daily lives;
• Who regulates the energy sector at the federal and state level; 
• How the energy system has traditionally been regulated and how our priorities are changing to prioritize energy equity, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and other major policy goals.

Transforming the energy sector from the old way of doing things (with a focus on large-scale power plants and long-distance transmission lines) to a more distributed, renewable, and equitable system has a lot of challenges, but there are also many reasons for hope, including the leaders stepping up to the challenge.

Highlights:

• “Public regulatory commissions are some of the most important and least known regulatory bodies in our everyday lives, but they impact everything about the way we live.”
• “This is the most exciting time in energy regulation I’ve known and I’ve only been doing it for 32 years.”
• “What gives me hope is that I do an awful lot of utility regulatory proceedings, legislative proceedings and things related to energy. And what really gives me hope is leadership. I see leaders emerging to meet the challenge.”

Resources and Further Readings

• For a more in-depth primer on how the energy system is regulated (with a focus on electricity), see “Electricity Regulatory in the U.S.” by the Regulatory Assistance Project.
• Munn v. Illinois is a foundational case that recognized government’s right to regulate private enterprise for public good.
• In October 2022, Karl Rábago and several other experts submitted expert witness testimony on behalf of the Just Solar coalition in Minnesota, on issues including energy equity, rate design, integrating distributed energy resources, and many other topics relevant to how we regulate the energy system now and how that needs to change.
• In 1921, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect." The photoelectric effect is an integral part of solar photovoltaic power.