The mythology of deregulation

Over my couple decades of work in environment and energy policy a consistent theme has emerged from those opposed to clean energy. Repeatedly and relentlessly they push a “deregulatory agenda” that “relieves” business of the burdensome regulations relating to the environment. It doesn’t seem to matter what’s been the policy for the previous years, it’s always the same — less regulation is better. But better for whom? It’s obviously not better for the humans and wildlife affected by pollution of air or water or loss of habitat, but that’s the considered trade-off we must make, right?

This seems to be the traditional way of looking at any kind of environmental regulation, from emissions in our air or water to clean energy. We calculate the business costs of regulation and (hopefully) balance them against the benefits to human health and welfare to figure out if it’s worth doing. Environmentalists have gotten used to fighting the pitched battles to get “externalities” such as asthma rates, sick days, property losses from sea level rise or wildfires recognized in the cost-benefit analysis. But my years working in clean energy have shown me that there’s a whole group of beneficiaries that get short shrift in the public debate about regulation — the solution providers.

Established industry moguls have been incredibly successful in propagating the myth of the “job-killing regulation.” Fundamentally, this myth relies on a general misunderstanding of some basic facts about our economy.

First, the laws of supply and demand and competitive markets aren’t suspended just because society demands industries stop imposing costs on the rest of us as they produce products for our consumption. Restrictions on ozone-depleting aerosols and acid rain-producing smog from power plants were predicted to be doom for their industries, but the products continued to be useful so industry quickly found technological solutions that were cheaper and more effective than expected.

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/425998-the-mythology-of-deregulation