Changes
Steve Mitnick has authored five 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.
Since time immemorial, change and our adjustments to change, sometimes adroit, oftentimes not, have troubled mankind. Whenever periods of relative stability in history have been interrupted, whether by war, natural disaster, economic devastation, pandemic, or political upheaval, cultural norms are scrambled. Altogether new norms emerge. Though only once a stability is restored.
There are countless examples. One is when America’s utilities confronted wartime after the seventh of December in 1941. Forty-four months later they entered a period not imaginable before.
The December 4, 1941 issue of Public Utilities Fortnightly said:
“Public utility industries went into the month of December in a state of considerable uncertainty as to the future of their materials and supplies. This uncertainty resulted from the announcement by the Office of Production Management of a shift … to allocations based on use. Needless to say, the utilities were not alone in their state of uncertainty. If anything, they have been accorded special recognition by OPM (because of the essential character of utility service) which other industries and businesses might well envy… it will probably be a drawn-out affair since OPM will have to work out the allocation programs industry by industry.”