Customers Are Best Served By Competitive Markets

The Wall Street Journal
April 3, 2007
Letter to the Editor

Your article “industry Splits Over Power Play” regarding electricity regulation in Illinois (Corporate Focus, March 22) failed to consider one critical aspect of the current debate: the benefits of competition.

My company, BlueStar Energy Services, has lowers the electric bills of thousands of Illinois businesses throughout the state for years, and we wish to expands to customer choice to the residential market as soon as possible.

A reversal of deregulation will make that impossible.

Commercial customers in Illinois, including many in Ameren Corp.’s service territories, have benefited from competitive forces, resulting in lower prices, better service and product innovation.

Fulfilling the promise of deregulation, however, requires that these benefits are shared by residential customers, as well.

Ameren’s poorly conceives plan to “reregulate” would, by its own admission, not lead to lower prices, rather, reversing deregulation would lead to permanently higher prices under the guise of “rate stability.” Residential customers would lose the opportunity to lower their electric bills by choosing a competitive supplier offering lower prices and better customer service that the utility.

We believe there is a fundamental choice to be made: Do you believe that customers a best served by open, competitive markets with multiple suppliers competing for business, or are customers best served by historically inefficient government-sanctioned monopolies? We believe that the answer is clear.

Guy Morgan
Chief Executive Officer
BlueStar Energy Services Inc.
Chicago

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