It’s a political decision. If people let the utilities reap a windfall, they will. But people can decide that every dime of savings from FF is passed through to users. The question is how “sunk costs” are treated–you can wipe them out, or preserve them. And ,by the way, small investors hold like 1% of untility stocks.
Of course the cost of electricity will not fall overnight because as FF is phased in we will still be burning a lot of fossil. But the speculative premium will get wiped out fairly quickly. Oil would fall to around $10 or less.
You also have to take into account that things will change far more rapidly over the next few years due to the crisis, before FF can be a factor. The depression might already have bankrupted most of the utilities, we don’t know.
