It’s a Small World
Steve Mitnick has authored four books on the economics, history, and people of the utilities industries. While in the consulting practice leadership of McKinsey & Co. and Marsh & McLennan, he advised utility leaders. He led a transmission development company and was a New York Governor’s chief energy advisor. Mitnick was an expert witness appearing before utility regulatory commissions of six states, D.C., FERC, and in Canada, and taught microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics at Georgetown University.
My flight from Tokyo landed twenty-four hours ago, as of when I wrote this column. Still jet-lagged, as my prose here might reveal. But after a couple of weeks in east Asia, including meetings with a few power industry players there, I came away with some perspectives on the year ahead worth writing you all about.
Such as, especially at this time of global geopolitical tensions — post-pandemic stresses, Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, climate change, and surely more — one is reminded how fortunate we are in North America and how central we are to staving off the scariest scenarios. The power sectors of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan for instance lack the abundant natural gas resources of the U.S. and Canada and have but a fraction of the feasible sites for wind and solar farm development. Indeed, while we still have here a lot of headroom to make buildings more energy efficient, there the buildings are already so energy efficient there's little headroom left.