Utility Week

This week my main accomplishment was writing a blog for Utility Week, a British trade publication, about a conference Preventable Surprises co-hosted with PwC on 5 May in London. Here I am (on the left) studiously taking notes:

On my right is a credit analyst from S&P and on my left the partner in charge of PwC’s sustainability and climate change practice. It was heady stuff. An excerpt from the blog post:

European utilities have struggled over the past decade as growing supplies of wind and solar power have undercut prices at costly oil- and gas-fired plants. Tania Tsoneva, director of Global Infrastructure Ratings for S&P Global, told the group that European utilities have seen asset write-downs of more than €75 billion between 2012 and 2015, as well as multiple credit downgrades. S&P expects the trend of flat commodity prices, the main driver of European power prices, to reverse, easing downward rating pressure. "Utilities have not managed the transition well historically but are now taking the necessary steps to transform themselves," she commented.

The same phenomenon has not played out in the U.S. because Europe is way ahead of the U.S. in decarbonising. The U.S. will eventually catch up, no thanks to Trump. But how many gigatonnes of CO2 later?

5.30, 5.31, 6.1