I want to be clear about something before I say the rest of this: regulators should go after bad actors in retail energy. License revocations, fines, enforcement actions against suppliers who deceive customers or game the market — all of it. That’s the system working exactly as it should.

What’s happening in the Northeast is something different.

New York’s PSC has spent a decade layering restrictions on every ESCO in the state because some ESCOs behaved badly. Connecticut’s PURA is now proposing to eliminate every sales channel — door-to-door, telemarketing, direct mail — and restrict all retail enrollment to a state-run website. New York’s legislature has a live bill to ban competitive supply entirely. Maryland already did the equivalent in 2024, and competitive offers went from roughly 300 to zero within six months. Massachusetts is advancing a bill that lets individual municipalities opt out of competitive supply — not by finding a bad actor, but by holding a town meeting vote.

This is the legislative sledgehammer problem. Regulators have the tools to remove bad players from the market. When they don’t use those tools and legislatures step in with market-wide bans, the people who lose aren’t the suppliers who misbehaved — they’ve already exited. The people who lose are informed commercial and municipal buyers who were managing their energy costs effectively, and the competitive pressure that kept utilities honest.

The Enforcement That Works

In Connecticut, PURA enforcement actions in 2022 removed fifteen suppliers from the market — including settlements that resulted in $9 million in consumer restitution and hardship fund payments. Specific suppliers: Public Power, Eligo Electric, Viridian, Ambit, others. Licenses revoked or surrendered. Penalties imposed. The market continued to function, and retail choice customers saved an aggregate $106 million more than standard utility rates in the following year.

In New York, the PSC revoked the licenses of Polaris Power Services in July 2025 and Energo Power and Gas in October 2025 — both for specific, documented compliance failures. These are the tools working. A bad actor is identified, removed, and the broader market continues. This is how it’s supposed to work.

The Sledgehammer Problem

New York’s PSC imposed sweeping market-wide product restrictions in 2019 — price caps, product type limitations, savings guarantees — that applied to every ESCO serving residential customers, compliant or not. A 2023 state law (Chapter 482) requires express written customer consent for any price change. A November 2025 PSC order goes further, requiring monthly express renewal consent for variable rate products and mandating that all notices go by postal mail. These requirements, applied across the board, have shrunk the residential ESCO market dramatically — residential electric offers down roughly 49% since the 2019 restrictions.

Connecticut’s PURA staff is proposing to eliminate every retail sales channel — door-to-door sales, telemarketing, direct mail, third-party enrollment — and restrict all residential retail enrollment to a single state-operated website, with annual re-enrollment required.

Maryland enacted the functional equivalent in May 2024. Governor Moore signed Senate Bill 1, which capped rates, banned commissions to energy salespersons, and restricted product types so narrowly that the market collapsed within six months — from approximately 300 competitive offers to effectively zero.

Massachusetts is advancing H.5151, which passed the House 128-27 in February 2026. Its municipal opt-out provision allows any town to vote to prohibit competitive suppliers from new contracts or renewals. CCA programs are explicitly exempt. It is, by design, a mechanism for the market to be closed municipality by municipality, without ever requiring a statewide vote.

Who Actually Loses

Here is what these restrictions do not do: they do not remove the suppliers who caused the problems. Most of those suppliers have already exited, been revoked, or restructured their products under enforcement pressure.

What market-wide restrictions do is eliminate the market for everyone. The large commercial tenant who negotiated a three-year fixed-rate supply contract for a portfolio of properties. The municipality that uses competitive procurement to deliver lower rates to residents through a CCA program. The mid-size manufacturer that retained an energy broker to manage its supply costs across multiple facilities. These are informed, active market participants who are not being protected from anything — they are being stripped of a tool that was working for them.

And who benefits? The regulated utility, which retakes customers it lost to competitive supply, and which operates under a cost-of-service model where every additional customer is additional regulated revenue. The utility did not earn those customers back by offering better products. The legislature handed them back.

The Question Worth Asking

The regulators who are proposing to eliminate sales channels, require monthly re-enrollment, and restrict markets to state-operated websites are not wrong that consumer confusion and supplier abuse are real problems. They are wrong about the instrument. Enforcement removes bad actors. Sledgehammers remove markets.

At what point does consumer ‘protection’ from choice become a monopoly protection racket?

— Todd Ford is CEO of Gridwealth Electric, a retail electricity supplier serving commercial, industrial, and municipal customers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Sources

NY PSC Case 12-M-0476 (2016) and Market Reset Order (2019): dps.ny.gov  |  NY Chapter 482, Laws of 2023: nysenate.gov  |  NY PSC UBP Order 98-M-1343 (November 2025): dps.ny.gov  |  NY Assembly Bill A2541 (2025): nysenate.gov  |  CT PURA 2022 enforcement: PURA 2022 Annual Report  |  MD Senate Bill 1 (signed May 9, 2024): mgaleg.maryland.gov  |  MA H.5151 (passed House Feb 26, 2026): malegislature.gov