Utilities earn excess profits at ratepayers' expense. Competitive markets can fix that.

For decades, utility regulatory commissions have authorized returns on equity well above the true market cost, inflating customer rates and insulating utilities from the discipline that markets impose in every other capital-intensive industry.

MarketClear works with regulators, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to evaluate a straightforward alternative: let competitive auctions determine the return that equity investors actually require, rather than asking commissions to estimate it. This approach produces a transparent, market-based answer to one of the most contested questions in utility regulation.

We provide research, analysis, model legislation, and implementation guidance to support jurisdictions considering this reform. The case is not complicated: when the return on equity is set by the market rather than by regulatory proceeding, customers pay less, and the billions in excess returns that currently flow from ratepayers to utility shareholders begin to return to the households and businesses that paid them.