January 7, 2008—Service reliability, aging workforce and environmental issues emerged as top concerns in Black & Veatch’s recently released 2007 Strategic Directions in the Electric Utility Industry. The industry’s top issues remain similar to last years survey results, announces the global engineering, consulting and construction company.
Service reliability continued to rank as the No. 1 overall concern, while the aging workforce moved up to No. 2 from No. 5 in last years survey. Environmental issues remained the No. 3 concern and aging infrastructure declined to No. 4 this year compared to No. 2 in last year’s survey.
The survey reports on the opinions, activities and future plans of energy companies in the North American power industry. It includes the inputs of nearly 400 energy industry executives; it explores, identifies and ranks the relative levels of concern on a variety of issues facing the power industry ranging from the aging of infrastructure and workforce, to views on regulatory practices.
The Black & Veatch survey measures the level of respondents’ concerns by offering a 1 through 5 scale of response intensity. For example, the 2007 survey results show an increased level of concern over carbon emissions policy, service reliability, aging workforce and aging infrastructure.
Approximately 82 percent of the survey respondents believe that global warming is occurring, and 44 percent of those respondents feel it is caused by human activity. In total, about 36 percent of all survey respondents believe global warming is real and is caused by man. Approximately 35 percent of respondents have a significant degree of confidence in the underlying climate change science compared to 42 percent who had low confidence in the science. Seventy-two percent of respondents believe that some form of US carbon legislation will be implemented by 2011. This is the same response level as the 2006 survey.
“These were surprising results. They suggest less support than we had expected for the science that underlies current and proposed climate change policy,” Industry Lead for Black & Veatch’s Enterprise Management Solutions Division stated Richard Rudden, Senior Vice President and Energy. He added: “The results also illuminate the substantial differences in views between the United States and other nations participating in the Kyoto Protocols.”
The survey results are available in PDF format to individuals in the energy industry and news media for no charge at Black & Veatchs Web site.
