Navigating in the Age of Uncertainty

Deck: 

Business models are evolving to suit a shifting industry landscape.

Fortnightly Magazine - September 2011
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The next 10 to 15 years will be among the most disruptive the U.S. utility industry has witnessed in more than 50 years. While utilities have faced change in the last three decades, including deregulation, re-regulation, the rise and fall of the merchant model, and new Clean Air Act regulations for SO2 and NOx, the structure of the industry has remained fundamentally unchanged. In addition, all of these changes have been mostly sequential, allowing utilities to focus on the one issue at hand.

Today, the reality is different. There are many forces at play simultaneously—for example, mergers and acquisitions, smart grid development, customer activism, environmental regulations and new technologies—and the industry is being forced to confront these trends, while at the same time facing unprecedented political and regulatory uncertainty.

Utilities will need to undergo significant change in order to respond to this challenge, but many will be hampered by a lack of long-term planning, a disbelief among C-Suite executives that the future will truly be different (namely “we’ve heard this all before!”), an economic recovery fraught with uncertainty, and a regulatory and legislative framework that’s ill-suited to driving the required level of change.

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