Changes in regulatory requirements, market structures, and operational technologies have introduced complexities that traditional ratemaking approaches can’t address. Poorly designed rates lead to cross-subsidies, inequitable outcomes, and perverse incentives. An objective-based approach can better communicate costs to customers in a way that better serves operations and policy goals.

As the industry resumes major capital-spending programs, utilities and their stakeholders are rightly concerned about the effects on prices. Traditional regulatory approaches expose utilities to risks and costs, and can bring rate shock when capital spending finally makes its way into customers’ bills. Pre-funding investments can provide a smoother on-ramp to bearing the costs of a 21st-Century utility system — but it also raises questions for utilities to address.

The efficient frontier is a portfolio analysis concept designed to assess risk vs. return for an investment portfolio. While the financial projections of individual assets are key to the analysis, the end result is critical to successful structuring of the portfolio as a whole. Key to the efficient frontier is that it represents the highest level of a portfolio's return for any given level of risk. It can be applied to physical assets, as well as financial instruments—simultaneously. Figure 1 displays a typical efficient frontier chart.

Given energy markets’ newfound volatility and the range of exposures that global energy firms must deal with, the reactive, reporting-oriented nature of transaction management practices is in need of serious revision. A new scheduling module can add tremendous strength and value to a company, primarily in the areas of gas logistics and risk management.