Missouri lawmakers are weighing whether to restructure the state’s electricity markets. Before moving forward, they should take a hard look at how restructured markets have performed during extreme weather and how they have affected household utility bills.
The record is clear: when reliability mattered most, restructured markets repeatedly failed, and over time, families, farmers, and small businesses in those states paid the price.
Missouri’s current vertically integrated regulatory structure has long-allowed utilities to plan ahead and build an energy system that serves customers with reliable power. Restructuring would replace that stability with short-term price signals that discourage long-term investment.
In restructured regions, power plant operators tend to invest less in weatherization and resilience, delay fuel-supply upgrades, and often fail to subscribe to firm natural gas delivery or avoid capital-intensive projects like nuclear power. To date, no commercial nuclear plant has ever been completed and placed into service in a restructured market.
In 2023 when Winter Storm Elliott hit the PJM region, which includes parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, electric reliability suffered as nearly one quarter of PJM’s generation fleet failed, and PJM barely avoided rolling blackouts. Restructured markets simply aren’t designed to incentivize and reward reliability during severe weather events.
Recent analysis from Charles River Associates shows that retail electricity rates in many restructured states, including several in the PJM region, have risen faster over the past decade than in vertically integrated states. In PJM, capacity market price spikes and wholesale volatility flow directly into customer bills, exposing families and small businesses to sudden cost increases.
Recent capacity auctions have produced sharp price jumps tied to tightening reserves and market rule changes. Even with elevated capacity market prices, PJM still had to rely on out of market “reliability must run” contracts to secure 2,100 megawatts of coal-fired generation. When a market has to routinely intervene outside its own price signals to maintain reliability, it raises serious questions about whether the market design is aligned with system needs.
In fact, in late February, PJM agreed to extend a price cap on its capacity auctions for two additional years at the urging of state officials and with federal regulatory approval. This action is meant to limit near-term cost volatility but also shows deeper structural issues of markets where price spikes can ultimately be passed to consumers.
By contrast, vertically integrated states can plan generation, manage retirements, and spread costs over time to reduce exposure to abrupt, market-driven bill shocks.
Missouri is experiencing unprecedented electricity demand from data centers, manufacturers and electrification. With that demand comes economic growth and jobs. Meeting that demand requires responsible investment in nuclear power, modern natural gas plants, storage, and hardened grid infrastructure. These are long-lived assets that depend on predictable cost recovery over 20 to 40 years.
Missouri already enjoys some of the nation’s most affordable electricity. That isn’t an accident. It’s the result of a regulated market that allows long-term planning, investment in winterization, construction of firm, dispatchable generation and upgrades that keep the grid resilient.
Last year, lawmakers reaffirmed the state’s reliability priorities by requiring that retiring power plants be replaced with always-on, dispatchable energy. Restructuring would undermine that progress by weakening the state’s ability to plan ahead.
When the next severe storm system arrives, Missourians will depend on a system built for resilience, not one modeled after markets that failed families in freezing weather.
Missouri can continue to enjoy affordable, reliable electricity that supports industry, families, and future growth. But doing so requires preserving a regulated structure that encourages long-term investment and storm preparedness.
Lawmakers should proceed with an awareness of what electricity market restructuring has meant in other states, and who paid the price when the lights went out.