S2E4, Alison Silverstein discusses building on the success of competitive markets to allow social policies to protect those most at risk from climate change

Few in the electric industry can boast Alison Silverstein's achievements in contributing to pro-consumer, pro-competitive reforms at both the state and federal levels. And there is perhaps no one better situated to discuss the causes and ramifications of last year's deadly weather-induced grid outage in Texas last year. Perhaps most intriguing, however, is Silverstein's call for building on the indisputable gains from pro-competitive reforms in electricity to ensure competitive markets build in social policies to protect those most at risk from the avalanching impacts of climate change we are experiencing already from a warming planet.

"The problem is that today we have not adjusted regulation or found the right balance - certainly here in Texas, arguably in California and other places - between what can we trust competition to do effectively and where do we need mandates and affirmative social policy to step in. Markets are wonderful at saving money and promoting efficiency," Silverstein says. "They need to be better at reliability. They certainly are terrible at equity. But we have significant reliability challenges that have to be handled with much more sophisticated analysis and mandatory rules that we haven't put in place. And we need much better changes in how we handle equity as a society, rather than waiting for markets to do that. So, we should be using competition for what it's good at and using social policy for what it's good at instead of trying to make the market do it all."