Europe has been doing this for 20 years now. I have yet to see successful results. And realizing each failure of Neo-liberal policy Europe keeps doubling or quadrupling down. I believe they are on their 4th energy package at the moment. I am sure the fate if this 4th attempt will be identical to the other efforts of making capitalism fix the problem, and identical to any other neo-liberal policy. Europe will have more billionaires and peoples energy bills will be higher.

As the saying in Europe goes: Neo-liberalism will continue until the economy improves.

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rglullis 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Really?

Do we have 20 years already since people are allowed to set up a solar panel in their backyard and sell excess capacity to the grid?

Do we have 20 years where farmers can grow their own biodiesel to (at least) power their own machinery, or does the state giving them subsidies to let them keep growing vegetables, wine and beef without having to compete in the global market?

	▲	runarberg 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We have had 20 years of energy distribution and infrastructure going from government ownership and into private hands, where different private distributors are allowed to compete for customers on the same grid. These were energy packages 1-2 (if I remember correctly). The results have been higher energy prices for European households. Energy package 3 was supposed to fix this with some additional regulation and standardization. It did not. Energy package 4 is supposed to fix this with more standardization and regulations (including distributed generation; which I am in favor of btw.) however, it will not. The problem is the privatizations of the 2000s, not in the regulations surrounding small scale solar. The problem is neo-liberalism. Get rid of corporations rent-seeking on our infrastructure. Our energy bills will not become lower until then.