New green mandates force portfolio planners to re-think their models.
Quantifying the impacts of renewable portfolio standards (RPS) on utility integrated resource plans (IRP) sounds straight forward—just add more wind, solar, hydro, biomass, etc., to the plan and everything should be good to go. The reality is not quite so simple.
Adaptive companies stand the greatest chance for success.
IBM compiled a comprehensive report, The Enterprise of the Future, which describes traits that the leading companies across all industries will share. Key industries—including utilities—also were evaluated individually to see how these traits might emerge as industries reshape and evolve in the face of customer demands, environmental pressures, global integration, workforce changes, and other challenges.
In the wake of the banking crisis, utilities lead the way to financial stability.
The back-to-basics trend positioned utilities and other energy companies to lead the way out of Wall Street’s mess. Despite a perfect storm of rising costs and a weakening economy, utilities and lawmakers might start a wave of investments in clean-energy assets and technology. But will Wall Street be ready to finance it?
The financial crisis calls on utilities to invest in America’s future.
True story: At the dinner table recently, my 11 year-old son—who’s running for 6th grade student council—bemoaned the arguments he’s having with other candidates. I asked what they’re arguing about, and he said “Everything.” “Oh really? What’s your position on the mortgage bailout.” “It sucks!” he blurted. I countered, “But if we don’t do it, the financial system will collapse.”
Is development of retail choice compatible with best-priced standard-offer service for smaller customers? Conflicting policy priorities threaten to distort Maryland’s retail energy markets.
How to maximize shareholder value across the enterprise.
How can utility companies ensure investment dollars are being allocated wisely? Asset portfolio management (APM) attempts to capture and analyze the relationships among the drivers of SHV at the portfolio level. It provides management with a well-informed, multi-dimensional picture to help make efficient asset investment decisions that optimize the total enterprise SHV.
The Big Build will test the industry’s access to Wall Street.
The era of easily available, affordable energy rapidly is ending and our society is realizing that our energy infrastructure is severely inadequate to supply the energy demands of the future. The major issue facing the sector today is how to fund and deliver this new climate-friendly infrastructure, which is currently estimated will cost almost $2 trillion between now and 2030.
Ad hoc approaches will fall short when the workforce crisis strikes.
Utilities are headed for trouble. A critical shortage of skilled employees likely will worsen. And overcoming the workforce gap will require viewing it as a strategic issue, and taking a comprehensive, fact-based approach.
Green investments require bulletproof financing.
Originally developed to compensate U.S. electric utilities for regulatory assets rendered uneconomic by deregulation, so-called “stranded-cost” securitization techniques are finding new applications. To date, utilities have issued approximately $40 billion of stranded-cost securitizations. That number could increase dramatically if the industry applies well-tested securitization techniques to the extraordinary costs it faces in the future.
Hollywood envisions the utility of the future.
One of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters this summer has been Wall-E—Disney-Pixar’s animated movie about a lovable robot who restores humanity’s place on a trashed Earth. I doubt Wall-E’s producers realized it, but they created a cynical metaphor for the U.S. utility industry.