Perspective

Conversations with Duke Energy’s chief strategy and commercial officer, Brian Savoy, EPRI’s Frank Sharp, and EV advocate Chelsea Sexton on the March 14-17, 2022 event.

Excerpted comments of the Commission Chairs from Arkansas, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, and other Commissioners from California, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, and senior leaders from Berkshire Hathaway Energy, ITC Holdings, PJM Interconnection, and PSEG.

Moody’s began publishing discrete ESG scores in January 2021. PUF spoke with the Moody’s team responsible for the coverage of regulated and unregulated utilities, midstream energy, public power, and power project financings, in both the U.S. and Canada.

“ESG impacts everything: the way companies trade, the way they are growing, and their M&A strategy, as well as how shareholder activists are screening companies and sectors.”

In what could be aptly called the Environmental, Social and Governance Era, utilities are being scored for their ethical performance, quite rigorously, quite comprehensively, by highly influential organizations. The issue is so big that we devoted a special issue of PUF to it.

“A utility may be dealing with a manufactured gas plant or other facility that closed down in the early 1900s, yet the policies may not have been issued until the 1940s.”

“EV make-ready is the electric distribution infrastructure needed to support increased load and demand brought by EV charging infrastructure.”

How can we make the supply chain for solar (presently largely offshore-based) more resilient?

“We work with local neighborhoods, community-based organizations, and churches and communities of faith to build solar and other clean energy projects that help reduce energy burdens for people in the neighborhood and help to support local jobs.”

The utilities industry holds three of its most important conferences of the year over a seven-day period.