Wendy Sherman: “As I was talking about before, the private sector was not anxious to build plants in California. A few years ago they…”

“As I was talking about before, the private sector was not anxious to build plants in California. A few years ago they bought the existing plants at bargain prices, which is proof that there is no pent-up demand or desire to build plants. You can serve San Diego or Los Angeles with plants built in Nevada or Arizona or Oregon, and nobody was anxious to build plants in those States either, either to serve Las Vegas, a booming market, or California. By the way, the electrons do not know when they pass a State boundary. The private sector did not want to build plants in the West. Now that we have these huge prices, a few companies are coming in to build, thank God. If we have a moment, I would like to illustrate why it is that economics 101, which we are being fed by the White House office, is entirely wrong. If you only take one course in economics, you are told if you pay more for electricity, if you let the price go up and up, you will get more. Supply meeting demand. Then you have to take the advanced courses to learn what happens when somebody has monopoly power. If we had a regulated market, you could make the electricity, and you are talking about kilowatts, I will talk with megawatts, which are a thousand times as large. You make a megawatt for $30, sell it for $50, and you have no reason to withhold supply. Every megawatt you make, you make $20 on.”