Strategic pain points require an artful approach.
Utilities are at the threshold of some of the most significant changes they have faced in their history, rivaling the passage of PUHCA in 1935. This change emanates primarily from a handful of key business drivers associated with major technological improvements (i.e., AMI, smart grid), the need for increased customer focus, increased regulatory mandates, and a changing workforce.
Utilities showed strong gains last year, but other industries are gaining ground.
The Dow Jones Utilities Index posted another year of solid gains in 2006. As might be expected, in connection with both the near-term and longer-term historical investor performance of the utility sector, there’s a story within the story. Further, this performance history provides a context against which the impact of both current and emerging issues can be assessed.
Policymakers are setting sights on new challenges facing utilities.
Utilities in the United States are heading into uncharted territories, and the regulatory landscape is changing accordingly. To learn what it takes to tame this new territory, we spoke with three FERC commissioners, a state regulator, and a Western governor.
Leadership requires alignment between performance measurement and strategic priorities.
A defense of the total return to shareholders (TRS). Our authors use TRS as the bottom-line performance indicator, and come up with a number of performance insights.
Retaining mid-career personnel will be important to a utility’s success.
With upward of 50 percent of the utility industry’s workforce approaching retirement, the industry’s leadership, at all levels, must come to grips with this enormous challenge. This looming demographic challenge is not simply a human-resources problem. For most of the industry, it poses a very real threat to the bottom line and touches upon the fundamental ability of the company to pursue its mission. The path to survival will require non-traditional thinking around all the people levers—staffing, work planning, compensation, work processes, performance management, development, job and organization design, and, most important, leadership.
Failing to address and adapt to the new ratemaking realities could result in increased costs for the economy.
The approaching 100th anniversary of regulation by public utility commissions in the United States calls for some reflection. How much have things changed, and how much have they stayed the same?
(June 2006) Mirant Corp. appointed Jose (Joey) P. Leviste Jr. as chairman, president, and CEO of Mirant Philippines, and as a senior vice president of Mirant Corp. Ian C. Connor joined Goldman Sachs in 2006 as a managing director in its Power & Energy Group. Unitil Corp. shareholders elected Robert G. Schoenberger, Charles H. Tenney III, and Dr. Sarah P. Voll to its board of directors. Piedmont Natural Gas announced several changes in the company’s executive management team.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 makes human resource challenges even more significant.
Hidden in the 1,700-plus pages of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 is a set of regulatory requirements that will redefine the technology, leadership, training, culture, compensation, job design, and organizational models currently employed in the industry.
Congress renews PURPA’s call for conservation and load management, but the world has changed since the 1970s.
The “N-word” in the title first appeared in this journal more than 20 years ago, courtesy of the celebrated environmentalist Amory Lovins and his widely quoted piece, “Saving Gigabucks with Negawatts” (Fortnightly, 1985). Scroll forward a few decades. With restructuring of wholesale electric markets at FERC, plus formation of regional transmission organizations and independent system operators, the game was changed.
Aquila Inc. announced that Norma F. Dunn has been named senior vice president, corporate communications. Prior to joining Aquila, Dunn worked 17 years in a variety of roles of increasing responsibility for El Paso Corp. And others...