Power Utility Execs Anticipate Sweeping Changes

PricewaterhouseCoopers has released a report summarizing its annual survey of senior power utility executives.  This year's version encompasses the opinions of 118 executives from nearly that many companies spread over 37 countries, and also includes the viewpoints of energy technology and equipment supplier executives.

Entitled “A World of Difference,"the report suggests that there are sweeping changes on the horizon for the utility sector. “These are profound changes with an unprecedented range of technological investment," said Manfred Wiegand, global utilities leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers. "As the pressures of climate change and energy security intensify, the conditions are ripe for a diversification of generation technologies."

Selected highlights from the report: 

• Compared to two years ago, the percentage of survey respondents anticipating that distributed generation with have the greatest impact on companies' power markets has doubled from 24% to 49%.  Furthermore, the proportion predicting that solar power will have the most significant impact has risen from 20% to 54% over that time period.
• Respondents see a carbon emissions cap that creates genuine scarcity in allowances as key to any trading scheme that addresses emissions.  They view energy efficiency and energy savings as the responsibility of governments rather than utility companies.
• Nuclear and renewable generation are expected to have the greatest impact on limiting greenhouse gas emissions.  Americans, in particular, rank nuclear as more important in this regard than renewable generation, at 56% and 35% respectively.
• Only a quarter of respondents expect that carbon capture from coal will have a big impact over the next 10 years, and that proportion only rises one percent when projecting further out to the year 2050. 

The majority of respondents believe that companies with global brands and big balance sheets will lead energy utility landscape, given the huge investments that are required in nuclear, carbon capture and storage, and other technologies.

Download the full report here.

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Photo by Jessica Juriga