Powell, Garza, Highley, Poletti, Williams, Sramek
Steve Mitnick has authored four books on the economics, history, and people of the utilities industries. While in the consulting practice leadership of McKinsey & Co. and Marsh & McLennan, he advised utility leaders. He led a transmission development company and was a New York Governor’s chief energy advisor. Mitnick was an expert witness appearing before utility regulatory commissions of six states, D.C., FERC, and in Canada, and taught microeconomics, macroeconomics, and statistics at Georgetown University.
With so many important voices within this issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly, as you page through the magazine, where should you start? It's a tough question. Here are some suggesetions. You could try one of these.
December's first article is a conversation with the chief executive officer of one of the nation's largest utilities. There you'll find Southern California Edison's CEO Steve Powell saying this:
"When we look at the analysis for 2045, if we manage the transition for decarbonization effectively, we believe that customers' all-in energy costs will come down. Looking at gasoline plus electricity plus natural gas, on average, the customers' energy costs would come down by about a third."
The second article features a roundtable with two utility CEOs. They lead one of the largest public power utilities and one of the largest from the cooperative sector. In this piece, you'll find CPS Energy's CEO Rudy Garza saying this:
"We have one of the lowest income communities in the country. Sixty percent of my customers are low to moderate income in San Antonio. I've got a hundred and fifty thousand customers that are close to two hundred million dollars behind on their bills... As a leader of the utility, it's unacceptable that there are members of my community that face those kinds of challenges paying their utility bills."