Which means that they have a relatively easy lever they can pull to significantly lower emissions even further.

Undoing dumb rules that favour existing vested interests is hard everywhere.

I mean, the US doesn't exactly cover itself in glory in its own utility regulations. "cost-of-service" regulation means that monopoly utilities are allowed to charge such that they make a regulated rate of return on the cost of providing the service. So the more they increase their costs, the more money they are permitted to make!

"Relatively easy" is a poor phrasing choice on my part. It's still very hard, but it's one of the easiest in a list of really hard tasks. Solving climate change involves a lot of really hard problems.