Duquesne Light Company
Steve Malnight is the CEO of Duquesne Light Company.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: How is the drive to decarbonize a customer-centric strategy?
Steve Malnight: There are many incredible transformations happening in our industry right now centered completely on the customer. When you think about our industry, for almost its entire history, the idea was the customer didn't have to engage with energy, and we built the systems to make sure they didn't have to engage.
Now with technology choices that are available for customers, with the ability to understand and control their energy use through technology, suddenly customer engagement is the future of the energy industry.
A lot of customers are going to make choices around the decarbonization path. They're going to make them because they have a particular value or priority in their lives around decarbonization. They're committed to that as a goal. But more and more it's because it's a cheaper way to buy energy and generate energy, or they're going to want to drive electric vehicles because they're just better cars.
As a utility, we do not have a history of being customer centric. That is the key for utilities to survive and thrive into the next century. How do we understand what our customers need and want? How do we make sure we're there to deliver? Start to look toward decarbonization options, and you're going to see where customers want to go.