Transparency Needed as Southern Utilities Announce Secret Talks to Create Energy Market

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — Today some of the region’s largest utilities—including Duke Energy, Southern Company, TVA, and Dominion Energy Inc.’s electric utility in South Carolina—revealed they have for months been engaged in talks to set up a new system to sell power to each other at the wholesale level. These closed-door negotiations have not involved any stakeholders.

In response to the news Frank Rambo, SELC Senior Attorney and Clean Energy and Air Program Leader, issued the following statement:

“The South’s power sector—dominated by large monopolies with not enough accountability or competition—is in need of significant change. A fully open wholesale electricity market could produce the efficiencies and competition that would result in cleaner energy and lower power bills, but a plan hatched in secret by the monopoly utilities that have most benefited from the status quo is not a promising vehicle to deliver that kind of change.”