Electricity open access – which allows customers to procure electricity from different generators on the electricity grid – has been widely recognized as an important tool to enable competition in the electricity market. Despite its advantages, the introduction of open-access legislation and its implementation have been fraught with challenges.

In the United States, the Federal Electricity Regulatory Commission (FERC) defined the regulatory structure for establishing open access in North America in 1996 through two major orders 888 and 889. Almost a decade later, India cautiously introduced open access to consumers through amendments to its Electricity Act in 2004. Today, Kenya recently released the Energy (Electricity Market, Bulk Supply, and Open Access) Regulations 2024, becoming one of the latest countries to legislate for open access.

In this webinar, speakers from each of these countries explore the challenges that the US and India have faced and continue to address in setting up the open access rules, and how Kenya, South Africa, and other countries with recent legislations can anticipate and leapfrog similar challenges as they move from legislation to implementation.

This webinar is part of the North x South Series (NxSS), an initiative of the Energy Opportunity Lab at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. NxSS facilitates interdisciplinary multi-country dialogue on salient energy topics, identifying common themes and cross-learnings among countries in the global north and global south.