This is not new, it’s perpetual. Actually, perpetuity is part of its nature.

Con Edison has, for years, been running a large advertising campaign, buying up and maintaining billboards and full-car subway ads in NYC with ads like the one above. Con Ed also has a state-stipulated monopoly on power distribution in New York City.

Yes, it’s normal for energy companies to sink millions (and more) into persuading municipalities to grant them a monopoly. But once they get it, they usually stop—otherwise, it just feels like propaganda, and creepy, like this description ConEd gives of itself (emphasis added):

We have seen major changes to the utility industry, and Con Edison has changed to meet the challenges of the new age of customer choice. We have sold almost all of our power plant capacity in New York City to encourage a competitive power generation market. Since November 1999, all of our customers can choose their electricity and/or gas suppliers through the Power Your Way program. But no matter which supplier a customer chooses, Con Edison will continue to deliver that energy safely and reliably through its distribution system.

Con Edison operates the nation’s most reliable energy delivery system in the world’s most dynamic marketplace. As we look to the challenges of the future, Con Edison can count on one advantage that no other company has – the energy of New York.

The only rationale I can dream up for this is that New Yorkers move away at a decent enough rate that people on the subway one day could well be sitting in Jersey choosing an energy provider in a month. But: they only operate in New York and some of Westchester. Maybe it’s about friendly customer relations? sure, maybe, kind of, but that can’t possibly be worth it economically. Maybe they’re worried about losing their monopoly? um, they own basically all the gas, electricity, and steam infrastructure in 660 square miles. Unreasonable.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2005 at 8:11 pm and is filed under Unreasonable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.