DTE Energy
Gerry Anderson is the retired CEO of DTE Energy.
In honoring Kuhn with Public Utilities Fortnightly's highest award, named for the extraordinary industry leader of a hundred years ago — Owen Young — we salute the man behind the transformational "Power by Association." We do this not alone. What follows are the voices of a dozen of the industry's top leaders of the twenty-first century, about Kuhn's accomplishments, and the man himself. Including four utility Executive Chairs, three utility CEOs, four retired utility CEOs, and Kuhn's longtime key associate at EEI, David Owens.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: When in your career did you begin working with Tom Kuhn and his team at EEI? Talk about some of those experiences.
Gerry Anderson: It was very early in my career. I took over DTE's power generation fleet in 1997. That was only four years after I joined DTE. I joined to start their nonregulated businesses but was asked to take over the generation fleet because the DTE CEO believed it was going to deregulate and wanted someone who understood markets.
I took over this big, predominantly coal-fired fleet and quickly understood that environmental issues were going to dominate the future of that fleet. We ultimately didn't deregulate. Nonetheless, I stayed on as the fleet's leader.